


College Drop Out

by WinchesterWarrenSon



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Gen, Negative Self Talk, Self-Harm, suicide ideation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-03
Updated: 2016-08-22
Packaged: 2018-07-29 03:58:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 17
Words: 22,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7669240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WinchesterWarrenSon/pseuds/WinchesterWarrenSon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Known on Tumblr as the College Drop Out Dipper AU. For whatever reason, Dipper can't keep up in college and feels like his life is falling apart. Stan, Ford, and Mabel try to help.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic does not screw around. Keep the Additional Tags in mind.

College tuition: thousands of dollars in loans and money out of his parents’ pockets.

Cost of living on campus: another handful of thousands.

Books: $200. Each.

Food outside of the meal plan: $6 or $7 without a drink unless you wanted to go off campus, but that was only safe to do during the day.

The razor blades in the campus bookstore: $3.

The cashier didn’t question why he was buying them. The cashier had no idea who he was or that he had no classes that would ever require exacto knife blades. They just took his credit card and swiped it. Handed them to him in a bag with the school’s logo on it.

He took it to his dorm. His laptop was still open and still had on display what his final grades were for the semester.

Three Fs for three final projects for three different classes. Giving him two Cs and a D for overall class grades. With how precarious his grades had been leading up to this, this would completely destroy his grade point average.

His hands shook as he ripped the razor blade package open.

He changed the angle of the razor blade last minute as his cell phone went off. While there was blood, it didn’t gush or spray. Just oozed to the surface and rolled down his arm, dripping onto his jeans. 

With the hand connected to the injured arm, Dipper grabbed the phone.

“Hey, Mabel,” Dipper said, hoping the wavering of his voice wasn’t noticeable.

“Hey, Dipper! I just got my grades back in! Do you have yours? Does West Coast Tech give those out at the same time as The Art Institute?”

“N-no, I - I don’t have mine back yet. What’re yours?”

“All As! I’m so happy, Professor Caines is a really tough grader and I never would’ve thought any of us this semester would get anything higher than a B from him, but I got an A! And they’re really impressed with my sweater designs and how it combines art with science and my adviser says if I do this summer internship, I could become a fashion designer come graduation! The internship is in New York, though, so I wouldn’t be able to come with you to see Grunkle Stan and Grunkle Ford.”

“That’s a great opportunity, Mabel. You should go. Grunkle Stan and Great-Uncle Ford won’t die on you or anything. They’re not that old yet.”

Mabel laughed, and the guilt crushed Dipper.

He almost … .

She’d be so … .

How could he even think of doing that to her?

“What about you? Wouldn’t you miss me?”

“Of course I would, but your future is important, Mabel. You should definitely go. I’ll see you when you get back.”

Tears were rolling down Dipper’s cheeks, but his voice had evened out.

“Okay! Well, I’ll call you later! I’m gonna call up Grunkle Stan and Grunkle Ford and tell them the good news, then call Mom and Dad!”

“All right. Mabel?”

“Yeah?”

“I love you.”

“Heehee, love you too, Dipper.”

She hung up first. He clicked the “end” button, then set the phone down.

He bit his lip hard as the tear production doubled.

He turned his arm over to avoid slashing at his artery and veins.

_You stupid, selfish, failure, failure of a student, a son, a brother, failure at life, the fuck is wrong with you, how could you fail like this, how could you even think of failing her like that, what is wrong with you, you big stupid, stupid failure_

He scared his roommate.


	2. Chapter 2

The “Welcome to Gravity Falls” sign came into view, and then the bus passed it. Dipper pressed his forehead against the window, but he wasn’t really looking at what was outside.

He could see the gnomes running between the trees as he continued into town.

There was no one at the bus stop waiting for him, but that was to be expected.

The snow fell from the sky. It was January 14th.

Mabel was back at the Art Institute, enrolling in her classes for this semester and working on the paperwork for the summer internship in New York.

He had been surprised by how well the lie had tumbled off his tongue when he said that he was enrolled in Physics 202 and how he was looking forward to Anthropology 102.

He was glad he had a reason to keep his arms covered up.

He was glad he and Mabel hadn’t shared a room since they were fourteen.

Once he had started, he hadn’t been able to stop.

His skin itched, and picking at the scabs was hard to resist. He attempted to rub at them through the coat sleeve as he walked through the town.

He knew Pacifica was across the country for college, knew Gideon was at college in Texas, knew that Wendy had gotten a job a few states over, knew that Soos and Melody had gotten married and that they and Soos’s abuelita had left to take an extended visit with relatives in Mexico. He knew Grenda was over in Germany and had been for two years now, still dating Marius and attending college over there and teaching children English, knew Candy was at Backupsmore like McGucket had encouraged and had that really cool research internship out there in lower California.

He knew none of them were there, and that was perfectly all right with him. He didn’t really want them to see him like this anyway.

Blubs and Durland noticed him as he headed for the Shack, but he managed a smile for them and waved as he continued on.

Dipper went up to the gift shop and saw that the sign said it was closed. Had he forgotten what day it was?

He walked around to the other door, reached out his hand, and knocked. He adjusted his bag so it sat on his shoulder better.

Ford opened the door. His eyes widened.

“Dipper! Well, this is a surprise! Come in, come in!”

Dipper crossed the threshold, glad he hadn’t asked what he was doing here just yet.

“Hey, Great-Uncle Ford. Today is Saturday, isn’t it?” Dipper asked.

“Well, yes,” Ford said.

“Why isn’t the gift shop open?”

Ford made a little bit of a face, apprehensive in nature.

“Here, why don’t you take off your coat. We’re got the heater running. And I was just making a fresh pot of coffee.”

“Thanks, Great-Uncle Ford.”

Dipper hung the coat up, then rubbed at the sleeves of the sweater Mabel had knitted for him this year for Hanukkah. He hoped he wasn’t bleeding through the bandages and getting gross blood or ooze on it. Maybe he should’ve worn a different sweater….

They stepped into the TV room, and Stan was in his big armchair.

“Dipper! What’re you doin’ here?”

There was a big smile on his face, and his tone was not accusatory, but Dipper still tensed at the question.

Stan moved to stand up, but then he winced in pain and immediately sat back down.

“Grunkle Stan?”

“Heh. I, uh, kinda had a bad accident on the boat. And with Soos and Melody wanting to go down and let Soos’s extended family see the baby and stay with them for a while, we figured we could run the Shack for them until they came back.”

“You hadn’t mentioned you got hurt on the phone,” Dipper said; he and Mabel always called them over winter break after their parents started to refuse to let them go to Oregon every chance they got. With how much extra work they got saddled with during winter break, the habit had stuck. Until now.

“Yeah, well, I hadn’t wanted to worry you two,” Stan said. “What about you? I thought your winter break would’ve been over by now.”

“This … this year was weird. Mabel’s winter break is over, but West Coast Tech’s didn’t start until just a couple days ago,” Dipper lied.

“Huh. That is weird,” Stan said.

“A lot has changed since I was in college,” Ford said. “I can’t believe they ask for so much money. It’s ridiculous. I’m gonna go fix that coffee.”

“Thanks, Ford,” Stan said.

Ford gave Stan a fond smile, then disappeared into the kitchen. Dipper stayed in the TV room.

“How’d you hurt your back?” Dipper asked.

“Ford and I got into fighting this giant sea monster, and it got me real, real high up, then threw me down like a rag doll. For a good, terrifying moment I thought I wouldn’t stand up again. Now I can, it just hurts a lot damn lot.”

Dipper’s gaze moved around the living room, and he saw a wheelchair that definitely hadn’t been there last time he had been here in the corner of the room.

He wasn’t entirely sure how much of that story was true, but Dipper would take it at face value for now.

“What’s on TV?” Dipper asked instead.

“Ah, just some black-and-white oldie movies.”

Dipper made himself comfortable on the floor and settled in to watch them with him.

“What’s this one about?”

“Well, these two soldiers both like the same girl, see,” Stan started to explain, and Dipper listened intently, wanting to pay attention far more to what was going on here at the Shack than be asked about anything that was going on with him.

Ford came back with the coffee and handed them to Stan and Dipper, then settled down with his own. The two men talked about which soldier the girl should end up with while Dipper just watched in silence, listening to them bicker good-naturedly.

His wounds itched. He eventually excused himself to the bathroom, taking his bag with him.

He took the bandages off, then scratched as his wounds, ripping the scabs off. Blood smeared across his forearms, making his arm hair sticky and red. He washed it off, turning the water temperature onto hot. It made his wounds sting unpleasantly.

He washed the blood off, then dried his arms and redid the bandages.

He made sure to take the towel to the laundry himself before going back to the TV room.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains Ford learning that his Luke x Leia ship was the WRONG ship to ship, lol.

Dipper didn’t ask why the gift shop was still closed on Sunday, but come Monday, Dipper helped Ford open the store back up. The outside tours were a warm-weather type of deal, but the indoor tour was still kicking and would be throughout the year.

Dipper noticed that there really wasn’t anyone else helping Ford with the shop now that it was solely Ford’s responsibility.

Stan had tried to wheel himself into the shop so he could run the cash register or do a tour from the wheelchair, but Ford had shot him down, saying that he needed his rest. Stan didn’t put up too much of a fight. Which was the biggest indicator that Stan truly wasn’t feeling good.

Dipper wondered if it had really been a fall from a great height that had caused the injury or if they were hiding something. But he held off on asking.

But as Dipper manned the cash register, it quickly became apparent to Dipper that Ford did not know how to do the tours.

Not only did Ford not feel confident in spinning lies and making stories up about the fake attractions, he got too caught up in the logical fallacies and the inaccuracies. He’d try to tell them about real creatures and … most people just weren’t interested in his scientific information.

The tourists were interested in entertainment, not paranormal fact. Especially since most of them were under the impression no paranormal activity was real.

There were plenty of locals who listened to Ford and paid money for it, but Dipper knew that wasn’t enough.

The gift shop was the main reason they were making any money, and it was because Ford had made sure there were things people might have to buy in a time of emergency: pain meds, bandages, pads and tampons, shoes. Stuff like that. It made the Shack the best place to stop if you were camping nearby and needed something like that.

But as a tourist trap? Not so much.

Dipper tried to ignore the itch of his wounds underneath his turtleneck sleeves as he helped Ford close up the store for the day.

“Great-Uncle Ford?”

“Yes, Dipper?”

“Are you sure you don’t want to hire someone else to run the Shack in Soos’s absence?”

Ford made a face, and Dipper waited for Ford to elaborate.

“I - I thought about it. I even put a few postings for work around town but … no one other than Soos even wants the management job. Literally no one applied, and the previous cashier before you quit so she could focus on school now that the school year started back up. I won’t see her again until the summer, and I don’t even remember her name. Soos had hired her, and with Stan and the doctor’s appointments, I just … everything’s been a big blur and I’m … I’m glad that Stan was able to work an honest-ish living for 30 years doing this, I’m glad he had been able to pay off my mortgage with it, but the whole freaky-things-on-display concept just … .”

“Freaks you out?” Dipper prompted, his eyes glancing at Ford’s six fingers for the briefest of moments.

“Well, yes. It does.”

Ford hid his hands behind his back as he continued to talk. Dipper furrowed his eyebrows; he hadn’t noticed Ford doing that before.

“And Stan’s just so much better at it, and I know why Soos had to leave, and I’m glad he’s able to go and let his distant relatives see the baby, but I wish he was still here to do this.”

Dipper frowned, his thoughts getting away from him. Had customers made Ford feel self-conscious about his hands? Had Ford felt like he wasn’t any different from the displays?

“I could run it, Great-Uncle Ford,” Dipper said. “While I’m on break. I was actually pretty good at it that one time Stan had a bet with Mabel that we could make more money than him in three days while he was on vacation.”

Ford, for a split second, looked like he had thrown him a great, beautiful life line and he had been lost in the sea.

“Are you sure? Shouldn’t you be taking it easy on your winter break?”

“Ah, don’t worry about it, Great-Uncle Ford. I’ll be fine,” Dipper said, smiling at him. “I’m happy to do it.”

Ford took the offer at that point without asking too many more questions about it. The moment they finished up closing up shop, Ford practically skipped back into the house to go tell Stan.

“Ah, great, now I won’t be able to get rid of ya,” Stan said, but Dipper could tell he didn’t mean it.

Dipper could tell Stan had been in quite a bit of pain for perhaps longer than Stan had suggested. He asked Ford for help for things that seemed so small with little shame or embarrassment. It was certainly a change from how Stan was before.

“I’ll make dinner,” Dipper volunteered. “Hey, have you seen Episode Six of Star Wars yet, Great-Uncle Ford?”

“Y’know what, he hasn’t yet!” Stan said, getting a rather wicked grin on his face.

“Wanna watch it with dinner?” Dipper asked.

“Sure, why not? I hope my fan fiction of old was somewhat accurate,” Ford said.

Stan was laughing to himself, at least until he hissed in pain.

Dipper put together dinner, and he could hear the movie starting to play in the other room.

He brought the food out when it was ready, then quickly excused himself as he ducked into the bathroom.

He ripped the bandages off of his arms, then handled the itch that refused to go away. Even after he washed his arms and hands, he still had evidence of blood underneath his finger nails.

At the very least, he hadn’t actually physically cut himself since he had arrived in Gravity Falls. That was three days since the last time he had picked up his razor.

Ripping up his scabs and digging at his wounds wasn’t so bad compared to that.

He came back after re-bandaging and pulling his sleeves back down over the injuries. And he was just in time.

“WHAT DO YOU MEAN LUKE AND LEIA ARE TWINS!?”

Stan couldn’t stop laughing.

“SHUT UP! YOU KNEW THIS THE WHOLE TIME, DIDN’T YOU!? YOU KNEW I’D REACT THIS WAY!”

“It’s not my fault you wrote Star Wars porn!”

Stan thought this was hilarious.

“NOW I HAVE TO BURN IT!”

“You still have it?” Dipper asked.

Ford’s look of terror at the sight of Dipper’s curious look made Stan laugh harder. Dipper started to laugh too.

“Excuse me while I destroy the sin sitting at the bottom of my desk drawer!”

Ford took his leave, and Dipper settled in next to Stan’s armchair.

“Ah man, I needed that laugh,” Stan said.

“Ha ha, me too. Poor Great-Uncle Ford, though.”

“He’s never gonna live that down, haha.”

They laughed together for a bit, eventually dying down and watching the rest of the movie.

“Thanks, by the way, Dipper,” Stan said.

Dipper knew it was about taking over the Shack for Ford.

“No problem, Grunkle Stan. What’s family for?”

Stan ruffled Dipper’s hair, like Dipper was still a kid, and it made Dipper’s smile widen.


	4. Chapter 4

When Dipper tagged along with Ford to Stan’s doctor’s appointment, he learned that Stan had indeed had a super nasty fall on the boat. But it turned out the fall and the severity of the bone fracture had led to the doctors discovering Stan had osteoporosis.

The pictures made it look like Stan’s bones were turning hollow, and it made Dipper’s stomach feel uneasy.

Stan remained upbeat, and Ford tried to keep both their minds off of the doctor’s visit afterwards, but Dipper couldn’t help the fact that his brain would spiral off into frightening fantasies about Stan getting hurt and neither he nor Ford being there to help. Even though logically, Ford would make sure someone was there for Stan if he couldn’t be, and that Dipper was there now, and … Dipper wasn’t really going anywhere.

“Hey, Dipper,” Stan said.

Dipper snapped out of it and looked up from his mug of coffee. They were in Greasy’s diner.

“You doin’ okay, kid?”

“Yeah. I’m fine, Grunkle Stan.”

“Been getting enough sleep?”

“Yeah.”

Never mind that he spent his nights just staring at the ceiling, his thoughts inevitably going towards the night he had gotten his grades back, what his grades had been, how sick of himself he had become, how selfish he had been in even thinking of -

“The bags under your eyes say otherwise.”

“It’s hard to recover your sleeping habits after you get used to studying, isn’t it?” Ford said, smiling at Dipper.

Dipper nodded, almost absentmindedly.

“How is West Coast Tech, by the way?” Ford asked. “Do they still have that advanced robotics program?”

Dipper swallowed hard. His hand tightened its grip on the coffee mug.

“I think so. My - my roommate had been majoring in that area of engineering, so … yeah. They do.”

His roommate hadn’t known Dipper wasn’t coming back. Dipper had seen the paperwork requesting a different roommate for next semester. This semester.

His roommate hadn’t looked at him or said a word to him since getting the RA.

“And what about your classes? Have they been going well?”

The words got caught in Dipper’s throat. He lifted the coffee to his lips. He took an ill-advised gulp of the hot liquid. It burned as it went down his throat. His tongue hadn’t appreciated it.

“They’re all right. They’re getting tougher, but that’s expected,” Dipper lied.

“Well, I know you’ll do great, Dipper. With your work ethic and smarts, there’s nothing you can’t do.”

Ford’s tone of voice and his smile said that Ford meant that to be encouraging. A vote of confidence. Uplifting.

Dipper felt the sudden urge to slit his wrists. It took all his effort to remain calm and just take another gulp of too-hot coffee.

Great-Uncle Ford would be so disappointed in him if he found out. When he finds out, he’ll be horribly disappointed. That smile on his face will twist downward, and the pride will die, and Dipper wanted to die just from thinking about it.

He didn’t want to disappoint Great-Uncle Ford, but the only thing preventing it was the lie that Dipper was on winter break. That wouldn’t last forever.

His winter break would have to end eventually.

Dipper didn’t look over at Stan for a while, but when Lazy Susan brought their food, looking at Stan had been unavoidable.

Stan was giving him a look with furrowed eyebrows and a frown.

Dipper did not acknowledge it. He let Lazy Susan pour him more scalding hot coffee, then didn’t allow it to cool before he bought it back to his mouth.

It burned his lips, but he ignored it as he took another gulp.

The itching of his arm wounds was worse than ever, but Dipper tried to ignore it as he ate his pancakes. The sweet syrup and butter made his mouth sting.

He rubbed his forearm against the edge of the table at one point, unable to take the waiting anymore, but he schooled himself into stopping when it lasted a prolonged time.

He was getting a little worried about the time it was taking for the wounds to heal, but he did keep messing with them and creating new ones.

To keep the hand that wasn’t using the fork to itself, he used it to pinch his leg through his jeans.

Stan started asking questions about what new attractions Dipper had planned, and Dipper opened up about the idea of creating some fake sea creature attractions and making up stories that borrowed from their sea adventures. That led to Stan and Ford telling many a tale that Dipper hadn’t actually heard before now, and Dipper was thankful for the distraction.

But on the drive back to the Shack, his thoughts went back to Great-Uncle Ford and college and Mabel and how he was such a big, stupid failure and how sad Great-Uncle Ford was going to be, how Mabel was becoming such a successful young woman while he … while he was nothing but a burden.

Dipper excused himself to the attic/his bedroom when they got home and reached underneath his pillow for the package of razors he had bought at college. He took the second, unused razor, then set it on the bedside table and slipped his coat and turtleneck sweater off.

He ripped the bandages off, revealing angry, red wounds. A few might’ve been infected, but Dipper was keeping an eye on them. If it became a problem, he’d do something about it.

He had gotten more methodical about how to cut. He wasn’t so distressed he couldn’t think this through, find the best spot to dig the razor into his skin and drag it across.

Despite being right-handed, he pinned his right hand between his knees, then used his left hand to take the razor and shallowly slice his arm open.

There was less damage on the right hand, specifically because he was right-handed and had used the right hand to destroy the skin on his left arm. But the left arm was starting to look like a horrific checker board, and he didn’t want to start cutting up his thighs.

Though what he was going to do after he ran out of arm was a question he hadn’t wanted to think about. But he was pretty sure he knew the answer was going to be the torso area.

The idea of cutting up his thighs or anything on his legs just sounded too painful for him right then. Would that change, he had no idea.

He didn’t know how this worked. He didn’t know if he was getting worse too fast or if this was normal….

He remembered being really little and tearing the skin off from around his fingernails with his teeth. His parents had been angry, and he had stopped when Mabel had watched him do it and reacted with a big “Ew!” and a disgusted face.

Was this just … the next step up from that? Why had he done it back then? He couldn’t remember.

He had replaced the habit with pen chewing soon after that, and that habit had followed him right into high school.

Chewing pens just didn’t do it anymore.

There was a knock at the door. Dipper froze, the razor still in his arm. The blood rolled down his arm, reaching his hand and his jeans. The blood stained the jeans, soaking right into the fabric, as Dipper sat there like a deer in headlights.

The door didn’t open, though.

“You all right in there, Dipper?” came Ford’s voice. “Stan asked me to check on you.”

Stan’s pain had been pretty bad today, so he must not have wanted to deal with the stairs.

“I’m fine, Great-Uncle Ford,” Dipper said, his voice even. Nothing about it would’ve told anyone he was slicing his arm up. Nothing about it would’ve told anyone he was upset.

“All right. Stan and I are starting a game of poker, so if you want to join, we’ll be in the living room.”

“Okay. Thank you, Great-Uncle Ford.”

“You’re welcome, Dipper.”

He heard Ford’s footsteps as he descended the stairs.

Dipper swallowed hard. His brain conjured up the image of what Ford’s face would look like if he had seen him doing this to himself.

His mouth twisted as he forced himself not to sob aloud. He dug the razor deeper as the tears started to roll down his face.

_All you do is hurt them, they all get hurt and it’s your fault, you’re gonna hurt them with how much of a freak and failure you are, you piece of shit, they’d be better off without you, you should’ve slit your wrists that day, Mabel would get over it -_

No. No, he couldn’t think like that. Mabel would be devastated. She loved him. She was his twin, he was her twin, she’d be so sad if he just … died.

_She’ll learn what you’ve been doing to yourself and be disgusted and not want you anyway._

Dipper focused on the cutting, allowed the physical pain to make the emotional disappear. He started to make a little picture as he continued to cut himself.

When he was done, he had carved a pine tree into his skin. A shooting star was arching over it.

He wrapped it up with bandages from the first aid kit he had brought with him. He wiped the blood off of the razor. He put it back under his pillow.

He got up, then went downstairs and watched Stan and Ford play poker like nothing had happened.


	5. Chapter 5

The longer Dipper stayed with them, the more suspicious Stan got.

Unlike Ford, he was much more familiar with modern-day college practices. Either West Coast Tech had devolved into an absolute mess of an establishment since the day they approached Stanford about his perpetual motion machine or Dipper was lying about it still being winter break.

January turned into February, and the temperature was slowly starting to warm up. Not enough to really melt the snow, but by the time Candy came back for Spring Break - and by the time Soos and Melody came back from Mexico - it would definitely be warm outside and Stan had a feeling Dipper would still be here.

Not that Stan minded. He liked having the kid around, and he was doing a hell of a good job with the tours.

But something wasn’t right here.

Dipper admittedly looked good in the Mr. Mystery suit. He had put together his own fez, stitched a golden pine tree onto the front of it with sewing material he had found in a trunk in the Shack.

It was weird to see the pine tree symbol atop Dipper’s head for the first time since Dipper had been here for that first summer. Stan wasn’t sure it was a good weird.

Dipper had left his cell phone on the kitchen table. He had taken to doing that while he did his tours so he wouldn’t get interrupted during them. The kid also used it as an excuse to come back into the house and check on him, even though Ford was practically his nurse maid at this point. (Some days, Stan greatly appreciated it. Other days, Stan wished Ford would go off and do a nerd thing for eight hours or something. Hunt a magical creature or something. Anything but hover over him and treat him like an invalid. Which … admittedly, sometimes he was, and that really sucked.)

But Dipper’s cell on the table meant that when it rang while Dipper was on a tour and Stan was in the kitchen, having rolled himself in there because today was a Ford Is So Annoying day and refusing to call for him to help, Stan couldn’t help his curiosity and answered it.

“Hello, Dipper’s cell phone. This is his Grunkle Stan speaking,” Stan said.

“His - grunkle?” asked a voice that Stan had never heard before.

“It’s short for great uncle, now who’re you?”

“I - I was his roommate last semester. I was just … I was just calling to see if he was okay. I haven’t … I haven’t seen him in any of the classes we were supposed to have together.”

Stan took that in stride. It confirmed what he had already suspected.

“Dipper’s been claiming he’s still on winter break.”

“… Winter break ended back on January 14th.”

“I see. So he really did drop out,” Stan said.

“But he’s … he’s okay, right?”

“Why wouldn’t he be?”

There was something the college kid wasn’t willing to tell him. Something that Dipper was hiding, and this kid knew about it.

“I - I dunno if I should say, if he hasn’t….”

“Was it bad?” Stan asked.

The college kid was quiet for a long time on the other end.

“Yeah, it was bad. It … it had really scared me… .”

The first thing that came to Stan’s mind was drugs. Dipper was on drugs and had gone on a bad trip. He doubted Ford would know what to look for if he asked Ford to go through Dipper’s things, but Stan would only go through Dipper’s things as a last resort.

He hadn’t really expected the kid to continue.

“But I was never that good of a friend, or roommate…. I was kinda the only one who would hang out and talk to him, but I never … made him a priority or … even talked to him all that much. And he had always seemed so into his school work, like I’d’ve been bothering him if I tried…. And then I just … .”

There was another pause.

“Can you tell him I’m sorry?”

“You should do that yourself. I’ll tell him you called and he can -”

“I … I don’t really think he’d want to talk to me. I didn’t really think he’d actually let me talk, I just … wanted to see if he was … . I have to go, class is about to start.”

The kid didn’t let Stan say anything else before he hung up.

Stan set the phone back onto the table like nothing had happened, and Dipper was none the wiser when he returned from his tour.

Stan was willing to hold off on asking Dipper about it for a while. But later that night, after dinner, Stan convinced Ford to make a last-minute trip to the grocery store for a variety of things. Not exactly happy about it, but grudgingly admitting they were low on important items, Ford left to do that.

It gave Stan plenty of time to ask Dipper what he wanted to know.

“So, Dipper, your college roommate called.”

Dipper didn’t turn his head around to look at him. He stared point-blank at the TV.

“Yeah?” Dipper said slowly.

“When were you gonna tell us you weren’t going to college anymore?”

Dipper just plain didn’t answer. Stan took a different route.

“Hey, far be it from me to judge. I didn’t graduate high school, remember? If it’s really not something you want to do, then far be it from me to make you go back. But your roommate said some other stuff, and I want you to be honest with me.”

Dipper was silent for a while, but then he said, “All right,” in a very tight voice.

“Are you on drugs?”

There was a pause, then a snort.

Dipper finally turned his head towards Stan, and there was laughter in his voice.

“Drugs? Of course not. Unless you count caffeine in coffee. Drugs are expensive.”

That they were, but Stan remembered plenty of homeless guys with no cash who were high as hell. And something about the way Dipper was laughing didn’t sit right.

But he wasn’t quite sure he was lying.

There were two possibilities. Dipper was telling the truth. Or Dipper had become a hell of a lot better at lying over the years.

He wasn’t going to take a gamble on the former being true when the latter being true and him guessing wrong and something happening to Dipper because of it would destroy what was left of his faux-black heart.

“If that’s true, then you won’t mind proving it.”

Dipper gave him a suspicious look, but he said, “All right then, I will. Check my room. You won’t find any.”

“I will,” Stan said. “But first, lemme see your arms.”

“What?”

“Your arms. To check for scars where needles would’ve stuck you. That would at least rule out, like, a lot of shit and soothe my concerns about you catching AIDS or some other horrible shit disease from sharing needles.”

“Ewww, why would someone share needles?”

Okay, that was definitely a true statement that wasn’t hiding anything. But he still wanted to check.

“C’mon, show me.”

“No,” Dipper said. Stan saw the hints that he hadn’t thought the answer through, that he was getting panicked, and that didn’t bode well at all.

Dipper was lying to him, and Stan felt anger bubble in his stomach.

He knew it was hypocritical, but the kid was hurting himself, and Stan wanted to help. It was one thing to lie to the cops or lie to strangers, but to your family, when it wasn’t for their own good?

“Show me, Dipper,” Stan said more firmly.

Dipper pulled his arms closer to his body.

“No!”

Dipper pushed away from Stan’s chair (having been seated on the ground this whole time), but Stan leaned forward and grabbed Dipper’s arm, ignoring the pain in his body as it complained about the sudden movement.

Stan grabbed Dipper’s arm tightly, and he had moved to pull Dipper’s sleeve down, but Dipper actually yelled in pain in response.

It had happened so quickly and had started Stan quite a bit that it caused him to let go of Dipper immediately.

Dipper hissed and held his right arm.

The way that he was holding it told Stan that it wasn’t needle pinpricks that he was trying to hide.

“I - I’m sorry,” Dipper said, bowing his head. “I’m not on drugs, I swear, but I can’t - I won’t - !”

Stan’s imagination didn’t know where to go. Dipper was hurt, but how, and when, and why, and what did this have to do with college?

In such a small voice, cringing with shame, Dipper made a confession, and Stan almost couldn’t hear it.

“I’m a different kind of addict, and I don’t want you to see.”

By the time Ford returned, Dipper had run up the stairs to the attic, and Stan couldn’t focus on what was on TV, even though it was The Duchess Approves.

For the longest time, Stan couldn’t figure out what Dipper had meant.

But then he remembered.

He remember Ma taking her cigarette and burning herself with it. On purpose. He still didn’t know if Ma had known he and Ford were there and just hadn’t cared or had forgotten they were in the backseat of the car. (That had happened before, her forgetting they were with her, especially when they were really young.)

“Stan? Are you all right?”

“My … my brain isn’t making this up, is it? Did Ma … did our mom really burn herself on purpose sometimes?”

Ford grimaced, and Stan knew it was true.

Stan knew Dipper was a self-harm addict, and it … it ran in the family? Or was it just Ma and Dipper?

“Y-yes, our mother … our mother was a lot of things, and a self-harmer was one of them. She also smoked a lot and drank a lot, which we obviously inherited. Though thankfully not all of her bad habits all at once,” Ford explained.

Ford was the alcoholic between them, and Stan was definitely the smoker, though Mabel had made him promise he’d quit. Ford so far had been able to trick Mabel into thinking his alcoholism wasn’t actually alcoholism.

“I’m sorry you had to remember that so out of the blue,” Ford said. “That … that’s a memory I never would’ve wished upon you.”

“It … it’s okay. It’s important to remember,” Stan said.

Maybe if he could remember Ma more, he’d have a better idea on how to help Dipper.


	6. Chapter 6

Dipper knew what the calendar said. And Dipper had no idea what he was going to do.

Dipper didn’t have a car. He relied on public transportation for everything if he wasn’t relying on family to drive him. So it wasn’t like he could just leave, live in a car for a while, then come back “on spring break,” conveniently when Candy and Mabel, the only two of their same-age friends who would actually be able to come back for Spring, would be back at college.

Hypothetically, he could just get back onto the bus, try to find places to sleep where the cops wouldn’t bother him, and peddle on the street or something for cash until he could come back to Gravity Falls…. Maybe if he showed off his birth mark, he could convince people he could predict the future and do what his great-grandmother had done for a living for a while. He was getting better at lying lately, after all….

Somehow, Soos and Melody returning had caught him by surprise.

The door to the gift shop opened, and Dipper, standing behind the cash register, looked up with a big grin on his face, decked out in the Mr. Mystery suit with the pine tree fez atop his head, and gave a jovial welcome.

Then he saw who it was, and he forced the grin to freeze in one place on his face.

“Dipper! Oh man, long time no see!”

Soos came over to him and gave him a hug, and Dipper let him, though he failed to return it as he winced in pain and screwed his eyes shut, concentrating on not letting out any pained noises.

“What’re you doing here? I thought Spring Break wasn’t until next month!” Soos said.

Dipper’s grin was permanently glued to his face. It was hurting.

“No, that’s - that’s Mabel’s. My schedule’s wonky this year. How was Mexico?”

Dipper was only half listening to them. Melody had gotten tanner, and the baby had a lot more cute baby clothes courtesy of Soos’s relatives. Some of it was hand-knitted with love ( _you got blood all over the inside of the sweater Mabel made for you, you ungrateful -_ ).

“So if you’re here, where’re Mr. Pines and Dr. Pines?” Soos asked.

“In the back,” Dipper said.

When they disappeared, Dipper was alone with his thoughts.

_Soos was back. Soos was the real Mr. Mystery now. Soos would want this back. There wasn’t room for both of them. They’d want the attic for space. You left bloodstains on the wood on the floor, you idiot, what if they find them?_

He had no doubt that Soos would continue to let Stan live with them for as long as Stan needed to. And where Stan went, Ford did do, these days.

But there was no room for Dipper. Not for the long-term.

_You’re worthless, waste of space, a burden, a black hole waiting to devour their resources, why don’t you just_

The bell rung, signaling that a guest had walked through the door, and Dipper forced a smile and a cheerful tone.

“Welcome to the Mystery Shack! How can I help you?”

Mayor Cutebiker stood there, his face breaking out into a smile.

“Aww, Dipper! I didn’t know you were back in town already! So good to see you!”

“Good to see you, too, Mayor. What can I do for you?”

“I was wondering if you had any more of those singing fish, but not a fish.”

“Hmmm, let me see….”

As he got Mayor Cutebiker set up with a singing Cthulhu, a few more guests entered the store, and Dipper went about seeing if they needed anything, helping them out, then checking them out and sending them onto their merry way, while also advertising when the next tour was.

When the store was empty again, the thoughts started to crawl back.

He didn’t have time to go cut. He just didn’t. He couldn’t leave the cash register unattended, and he had gotten into the habit of locking up the store while on a tour. But he couldn’t do that and not be giving a tour when he did that, they’d lose money that way and Stan would ask why, Soos would ask why, and he couldn’t, he just couldn’t.

He and Stan hadn’t talked about the incident where he learned Dipper had been hurting himself. Dipper didn’t want to talk about it. Dipper didn’t want to have to say the words “I self-harm” or “I cut myself” or “I want to die.” He didn’t want to have that conversation. Not with anybody.

He took out his smart phone.

He texted Mabel: “What’s something you’ve gotta have?”

She was a quick texter, so he received a response quickly. Probably hid her phone under her textbook as she was probably in class.

Her text read: “Sparkly yarn! And a new set of knitting needles. Pink! Sequins and glitter!”

She sent a second one: “What do YOU gotta have?”

Sense of purpose and razors, was what immediately came to mind, but Dipper knew he couldn’t text that back.

“Tarot cards,” Dipper texted back, half-joking.

She replied: “Haha! Since when?”

Dipper continued to text her, joking around about changing religions and becoming a fortune teller. As they went back and forth, Dipper went onto mobile shopping and bought her what she had asked for: sparkly yarn, pink knitting needles (a set of different sizes), and packages of sequins and bottles of glitter. He threw in some glitter glue for extra measure, then took it to the online check-out.

He might regret buying it later while he went back to California to be homeless, but it made him feel better.

Mabel texted him again: “Is your school mailbox the same?”

Dipper hesitated, then replied: “Just send anything you want to send me to the Shack.”

Mabel replied: “Heehee, good idea!”

And that was the end of the conversation.

His wounds itched, but he didn’t feel like making new ones now.

He’d be able to handle having to leave. He could handle it. As long as he had Mabel to talk to, he’d be okay. He’d be okay.

At the end of the day, Dipper closed up shop, handled stock inventory, then went into the back to the rest of the house.

He had dinner with Ford, Stan, Soos, and Melody. Dipper was a little surprised to overhear the conversation that was going on when he entered the kitchen.

“No way, really!? Wow! Oh, hey, Dipper! Mr. Pines was just telling me how you managed to increase the Shack’s income in just a few months more than I did in a whole year! You’re a natural at this, dude!”

Dipper blushed heavily.

“I’m just doing what you guys did. No big deal.”

“Dude, how long did you say you were gonna be on break? Just because I’m back doesn’t mean you gotta stop working. Unless you want to, of course. I don’t want to keep you from your studies or whatever you want to do.”

“No! No, it’s fine. I - I’m gonna be here for a while longer, I can totally still work a while.”

Ford made a bit of a face. “How does West Coast Tech expect you to get anything done if their winter break goes on into spring? The nerve of that place.”

“Winter - ?” Soos and Melody said, but Stan took his elbow and jabbed Soos in the side with it.

Stan gave Soos a meaningful look that Melody caught as well, and the both of them dropped the line of questioning they had at the ready.

This somehow slipped passed Ford without him noticing. Dipper could hear him muttering about West Coast Tech under his breath and something about “can’t believe I was that upset over not being considered for what is obviously a sham. I dodged a bullet there, honestly.”

Dipper smiled to himself as he sat down and ate.

Melody and Soos back would mean he wouldn’t have to run both cash register and do tours at the same time, so that would be convenient. And if they really didn’t mind him living in the attic, then … maybe this would work out after all.


	7. Chapter 7

Stan was frowning deeply as he sat in his wheelchair, watching Ford, Soos, Melody, and Abuelita wishing Dipper goodbye at the bus stop.

“Good luck with your studies, Dipper!” Ford said brightly, his smile encouraging and full of pride.

Stan could tell Dipper’s smile was fake, but the hints toward that seemed to be lost on the others.

It was starting to get too hot for long sleeves, but Dipper still wore a hoodie.

“You be careful, kid, all right? If you need anything, you call me,” Stan said.

Dipper nodded, and his smile had started to falter a little.

“Thanks, Grunkle Stan.”

Dipper then got onto the bus, and off he went.

While the others went about their business when they got home, Stan climbed the stairs carefully to the attic. Dipper had cleaned up most of it, but he went to the wastepaper basket. It had crumpled up paper at the top of it, but Stan took the basket and emptied its contents onto the mattress.

It was disgusting to wade through, but underneath the crumpled up paper was bloody bandages and a few old razor blades. The discarded razor blades had bloodstains on them.

Dipper had thrown it away to make it look like nothing bad was in the basket, so that when it had gotten thrown out, no one would’ve been the wiser. Heck, Dipper probably meant to throw this out himself. The kid had been a little distracted when he had been packing up and doing his last tour “until his next break.”

Just in case, Stan smoothed out the pieces of paper. They actually did have things written on them. Lists of things Mabel liked and wanted, things Ford enjoyed or needed help with around the house, things Stan needed due to his medical issues or liked to do in his free time.

His thoughts went to when Dipper had somehow managed to get him new cigars, even though the kid wasn’t old enough to buy them himself yet.

Stan put it all back into the wastepaper basket and threw it out himself.

About three days later, they were standing at the bus stop once again, this time waiting for Mabel and Candy. Candy’s parents were also there at the bus stop with them, and Ford was having quite the conversation with them.

The bus pulled up, and Mabel and Candy were practically the first ones off.

“Grunkle Stan! Grunkle Ford!”

“Welcome back, pumpkin!”

“Grunkle Stan, what happened!?”

“Heh. I kinda wasn’t one-hundred percent honest about things. I’m not paralyzed, though, sweetie, this is just to prevent more broken bones.”

“Well, good! Jeez, Grunkle Stan, that scared me!”

“I’m sorry, Mabel.”

“And this is why we don’t lie about our health, Stanley.”

“Shut it, Ford.” 

Mabel and Candy wasted no time catching them up on everything that had been happening and how Mabel’s application for her summer internship had been going. She was so excited for it, and it was great to see her so bright and bubbly and smiling.

But eventually, Mabel asked, “So what’s taking Dipper? Shouldn’t he be here already?”

“Yeah, it’s kinda weird for him to be so late,” Candy said.

Ford tilted his head. “He said West Coast Tech worked on a different schedule from your colleges. Did he not tell you?”

“College doesn’t work like that, Grunkle Ford. Either the schedule works different every year or it stays the same as everyone else’s. I’m gonna call ‘im.”

Ford looked to Stan, and Stan’s smile from Mabel’s stories faded away as he made eye contact with Ford.

But neither uncle said anything as Mabel held her cell out and dialed the number. It became obvious that she was using speaker phone when Dipper’s voice floated out of the phone.

“Hey, Mabel.”

“Dipper! Hey! What’s up?”

“Nothing. How’s Gravity Falls?”

“I knew you didn’t forget! Dipper, why aren’t you here yet?”

“I … I’m not gonna be able to make it, Mabel. Something came up. I’m sorry.”

“But … But Dipper, I’m going off to New York for the summer! And I haven’t seen you since winter break at Mom and Dad’s!”

“I - I know, Mabel, but it can’t be helped. Say hi to Grunkle Stan and Great-Uncle Ford for me, okay?”

“You can tell them yourself, you’re on speaker phone.”

“O-oh. Uh, hi Grunkle Stan. Great-Uncle Ford.”

“Dipper, what’s going on?” Ford asked, leaning closer to the phone. “Why did you - ?”

Stan interrupted him. “Are you okay, kid? Are you in trouble?”

“I’m fine, Grunkle Stan,” Dipper said, his tone taking a bit of an edge to it.

It had the air of the “are you on drugs” talk all over it.

“Dipper?” Mabel asked, but Stan trudged through what he needed to ask Dipper.

“And you’re safe?” he asked, thinking about the razor blades, about how Dipper had cried out in pain when Stan had grabbed his arm.

Dipper actually started to laugh, and that did not put any of Stan’s concerns at ease.

Candy and Mabel both frowned and gave each other uneasy looks.

“ _Dipper, why can’t you make it?_ Where are you?” Stan demanded.

Ford opened his mouth, but he couldn’t form the words as Dipper’s laughing got louder, but also stopped sounding like it was laughter. It hadn’t quite made the transition from laughter to something else, but it certainly wasn’t being made out of amusement.

Dipper got a hold of himself suddenly, and all they could hear was his breathing. The kind of breathing you did to get better control over yourself when you were freaking out.

“I’m not saying it over speaker phone,” Dipper eventually said.

Mabel took the phone, then put it up to her ear.

“Dipper? What’s going on?” Mabel asked.

But her facial expression looked more distressed, and she took the phone away from her ear. She wordlessly handed the phone to Stan.

Stan took it and put it to his ear.

“Kid?”

“West Coast Tech gave my parents a refund.”

Oh.

“I hadn’t told them. I hadn’t thought - but of course they did, why wouldn’t they? They told my parents, and I didn’t think - _I didn’t think -_ !”

“Are you at your parents’ place?” Stan asked. There’d be less to worry about if he was, at least he’d be with family.

Dipper made this pitiful sound on the other end, and Stan could only imagine what was happening over there.

“No,” Dipper eventually said.

Stan opened his mouth to ask again where he was, but then Dipper continued.

“Dad got really mad.”

Stan’s memory was jogged, and he suddenly had an image of Filbrick Pines throwing him his bag stuffed with clothes, the bag hitting him in the stomach as he stared up at the window, asking Ford to tell their father he was being crazy.

“How mad is really mad?” Stan asked, almost without thinking, and he heard more distressed noises on Dipper’s end. “N-never mind, are you okay? Where are you?”

“I - I’m in an alley…. I’m not on drugs,” Dipper said.

“Heh. Yeah, I know you’re not on drugs, kiddo, I went through your trash can.”

Silence was on Dipper’s end, but Stan was pretty sure he was still on the line.

“You gotta tell me the truth, Dipper. Are you hurt?”

He could hear Dipper swallow hard on the other end.

“I’m bleeding….” Dipper admitted.

“Are you able to stop it?”

“Y-yeah….”

“Good. Good. Dipper, I want you back home. Here in Gravity Falls. Can you do that for me? Can you come back?”

Dipper didn’t say anything.

“You gotta talk to me. Can you come back home or am I never gonna see you again?”

His brain was choosing the wrong time to supply him with memories, memories of his own dark, dark days where he had considered actually properly killing himself in a car accident or by jumping off a bridge or just drinking himself to death.

Dipper was quiet for far too long.

“Mabel and Great-Uncle Ford are gonna hate me….”

“No! No they’re not, Dipper, they love you. We all love you, me, Mabel, Ford, Soos - hey, Candy’s back from college too, and she was looking forward to seeing you. And - and I can call Wendy and - and there’s lots of people here who would really miss you if you didn’t come back. And the tourists freakin’ loved ya, this was the busiest off-season we’ve ever had thanks to you. We need you here, Dipper.”

There was silence on Dipper’s end, but then he spoke up in a soft tone.

“I don’t think I can get on a bus looking like this. Can you pick me up?”

“Yeah, of course! Of course I can. Ford and I’ll - !”

“N-no, I - I don’t want Mabel or Great-Uncle Ford to see me like this - !”

“What about Soos?”

“… Okay.”

“Okay. Soos and I’ll pick you up, and we’ll all be back in Gravity Falls in, like, four hours or something. Just tell me where to meet you, and Soos and I will head out right now.”

Dipper gave him the address of a restaurant with a big parking lot, and Stan wrote it down.

“I’m giving the phone back to your sister. You talk to her as much as you need to, okay? I’ll be right there.”

He handed it back to Mabel, then yelled, “SOOS! Emergency! We’re picking up Dipper and bringing him back!”

While Stan and Soos got what they needed together and got into the car, Mabel held the phone to her ear, surrounded by a very worried Candy and Ford.

“Dipper?”

“I - I’m okay, Mabel. I’m sorry, I know I scared you. I’m okay, really.”

“Why is Dad mad?”

She could hear Dipper swallow.

“I don’t … really want to talk about it. Did you get the yarn and knitting needles I sent you?”

“Yeah…. Yeah, I did. They’re great, Dipper. Especially the sequins.”

“Good. Good. And how’s the internship paperwork going? Do you know if you’ve got it?”

“Yeah, the internship is for sure. I know who my adviser is and everything.”

“That’s great, Mabel!”

But what’s going on, and why are you hurt? was what she wanted to ask, but Mabel played along. She talked about her now-ex-boyfriend and put him back on speaker phone so he could talk to Candy and ask her questions. She was working on becoming a geneticist, and they were able to follow each other’s nerd talk really well.

Ford stayed quiet, his stomach not behaving right.

Just what was going on?


	8. Chapter 8

It had taken two hours to drive into California and find the restaurant. Dipper said he’d meet them in the middle of the parking lot, and there he was, looking nervously around him.

Soos was behind the wheel, and he pulled up right next to Dipper.

Dipper moved to just get on into the car, but Stan opened the door to shotgun and got out. He walked around the car at a quick pace, then put a hand on Dipper’s shoulder.

Dipper was wearing his hoodie, but Stan could see the bloodstains that had bled through the fabric. Stan swallowed hard.

“Do we need to make a pit stop of a first aid kit?” he asked.

Dipper shook his head.

The two of them then got into the car, and Soos started to drive right back to Gravity Falls.

“You dudes hungry?” Soos asked. “I’m having a hankering for burgers. I saw a fast-food place on an exit that’s on the way.”

“You hungry, Dipper?” Stan asked.

“No,” Dipper said, buckling up and hunching his shoulders.

Soos kept his eyes on the road, but at some point he looked in the rear view mirror to get a look at Dipper.

Soos hit the brake rather suddenly.

“Dude! You’re bleeding!”

“I’m okay, Soos.”

“Is … is it someone else’s?” Soos asked.

“No.”

“Is the next stop a hospital?”

“No hospitals,” Stan said. On the drive into California, bits and pieces of Stan’s memories from his homelessness days were coming back in fractions. Stan felt like sending Dipper to a hospital in this state would just make things worse. “Just take us home, Soos.”

Soos did as asked, though it was clear that Soos wasn’t comfortable with Dipper bleeding in the back seat and them not appearing to be doing anything about it.

“You did stop the bleeding, right, Dipper?”

“Yeah.”

“Good. You got a preferred radio station?”

They ended up listening to ‘80s and ‘90s pop music the entire ride, but neither Stan nor Soos complained.

Dipper didn’t talk much on the ride back. He mostly stared out the window.  
But Stan and Soos couldn’t help but notice when Dipper pulled his hoodie sleeve up and scratch at his scabs.

“Soos!” Stan scolded as Soos got too distracted by the sight of Dipper’s carved up arm in the rear view mirror. Soos immediately righted the car, going back into their lane on the highway.

Stan, however, could look in the rear view without endangering their lives, and his stomach no longer wanted any food as he watched Dipper peel off freshly healed-over scabs. He recognized the pine tree and shooting star symbols on his arm, though those scars were fading, especially when compared to the angry red of the open wounds.

Dipper didn’t seem to realize he could see without turning his head around, and Stan wanted to keep it that way.

So he didn’t say a word about it.

Neither did Soos.

Soos honestly looked like he had been frightened into silence.

They arrived back in Gravity Falls, and soon they were parked outside of the Mystery Shack.

Mabel and Ford were standing on the front porch, with Melody, Abuelita, and Candy just a few steps behind them.

Stan sighed.

“Dipper, there’s a blanket under your seat that you can use to cover up,” Stan said.

Dipper bent over and pulled the blanket out, then unfolded it and wrapped it around himself.

Soos turned the car off, and the three of them got out.

Stan noticed that Dipper’s finger nails were still caked with blood, and there was just no way around that. Not at this point.

Mabel ran over, and she threw herself at Dipper, hugging him tightly.

Dipper hissed in pain and winced, and Mabel immediately let go of him.

“D-Dipper?”

He forced a smile.

“I’m okay,” Dipper said.

Mabel frowned.

“You’re lying,” she stated, and the disappointment in her voice was palpable. “And you look like you haven’t slept in days.”

His smile faltered, but didn’t die.

“Can someone please tell me what’s going on?” Ford asked.

“Let’s get Dipper inside first. Maybe a change of clothes, too. Candy, I think it’s time you headed back to your parents’ place.”

“But-” Candy started, but she sighed and relented.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Candy,” Mabel said, giving her a hug goodbye.

After changing into a not-blood-stained plaid, long-sleeved shirt, Dipper ended up falling asleep on the couch in the TV room as Soos and Ford worked on dinner. Mabel was curled up next to him, her arms around his shoulders.


	9. Chapter 9

The next morning, no one had expected it. But Dipper had opened the Mystery Shack, was decked out in his Mr. Mystery suit and fez, and was conducting business like he had never left before anyone had really rolled out of bed and started breakfast.

“Morning, Soos! Did you want the first tour, or can I take it?”

“I - w-whatever you want, dude,” Soos said, remembering how Dipper’s arm had looked in the back seat of the car.

The image of Dipper’s skin having been sliced open, flaps of skin being pulled back and ripped apart from the rest of the arm as Dipper scratched at himself, was very, very much seared into his brain, and he hadn’t been able to get to sleep last night because of it.

He had no context for how it had happened or why Dipper would pick at his wounds like that, and it made him nauseous to think that someone would’ve been cruel to Dipper in such a way.

But at work was no place to talk about it, and Dipper made it very clear he had no intention of taking it easy today.

And Soos … also wasn’t sure he would be able to keep himself together to have a conversation like that. He loved Dipper and Mabel and Stan so much, and just the thought of them hurting hurt him a lot.

When Mabel emerged into the shop, later in the day, Soos explained that Dipper was running a tour right then, but he’d be sure to give Dipper his lunch break once he came back and they’d be able to talk.

Dipper walked through the entrance to the gift shop, leading in his tour group.

“And there you have it, folks! If there’s an attraction you particularly liked, we have T-shirts, snow globes, baseball caps, and all sorts of other items you can purchase to remember them by! They make great show-and-tell items at school, too!”

Dipper winked at the children who were with their parents, and they immediately ran across the shop, looking for the perfect item.

Dipper turned around, adjusting his bow tie, then saw Mabel and froze.

The only indication that he was experiencing a different emotion than what he showed the tour group was the fact that his eyes had widened just so. The smile was still firmly in place on his face.

“Hi, Mabel,” Dipper got out, his voice still sounding like he was doing a stage performance.

“Dipper, I -” Mabel started, but then a customer came up to Dipper and tapped him on the arm.

Dipper involuntarily winced, but he forced it back as he turned his head towards the customer.

“Do you have anything resembling the Gobblewonker?”

“We sure do! It’s this way.”

And Dipper led them to a corner of the store.

It was clear what was the biggest difference between Stan’s way of doing things and Dipper’s. Dipper took the extra mile to be particularly personable and interactive.

Mabel didn’t like to think that the main reason was that Dipper was trying not to think about bad things or to avoid something.

She didn’t like that he was trying to avoid talking to her.

Eventually, though, Dipper ran out of people he could help without being weird and annoying.

“Lunch time, Mr. Mystery,” Soos said, patting Dipper on the back.

“Ford made sandwiches with soup,” Mabel said, walking with Dipper into the back.

“Sounds good,” Dipper said, his voice sounding a little tight.

“Candy said she’d be over to visit this afternoon. She wanted to talk to you about some nerd stuff.”

Dipper nodded, but didn’t say anything.

Mabel held her tongue about what she wanted to talk about until she, Ford, Stan, and Dipper were all at the kitchen table. Melody had gone into the store to help Soos, and Abuelita was elsewhere in the house with the baby.

And Stan had asked Melody and Abuelita to allow them to have the conversation they were hoping to have with Dipper in private. That was a big contributor to them not being there.

Dipper sat perched on the edge of his chair, ready to get up and run off at a moment’s notice.

The conversation didn’t start right away, though not because Mabel and Ford hadn’t tried. Stan just kept interrupting with questions about how the Shack was doing today.

Dipper answered Stan’s questions easily enough, and he even started to smile in a more relaxed manner during a few of them.

Then Stan smoothly changed topics. It wasn’t really a transition, but he picked up when Dipper would be more accepting to the topic change.

“Do you want to tell them, or should I?” Stan asked.

Ford swallowed his mouthful of soup, and Mabel set her sandwich down.

Dipper’s jaw tightened, but he still spoke up.

“I … I might as well, I guess….”

Stan made a gesture to show that Dipper had the floor and that it was all up to him to share.

Dipper took a deep breath. But at the last moment, he averted his eyes, preventing eye contact with Ford, even though the man was sitting right across from him.

“I dropped out of West Coast Tech. I kept it a secret and lied to everyone. My grade-point average was never going to recover from the final grades I got last semester. I … .”

Dipper’s mouth moved like he was trying to say something else, but he took another deep breath.

Stan frowned when all Dipper said next was “I’m sorry.”

“What do you mean you dropped out?” Ford asked, and Stan gave him a look.

Dipper hunched his shoulders, his body frame looking a bit more like Stan’s as he did so.

“What about your future?” Ford continued, and Stan kicked Ford from underneath the table. “Ow! What was that for?”

“For being an idiot,” Stan bit back.

“Dipper, why didn’t you just say so? How am I supposed to comfort you if you don’t tell me bad things are happening?” Mabel said, reaching out to place her hand reassuringly on his arm.

Dipper hissed in pain as she touched it, and she immediately pulled her hand back.

“What’s wrong?” Mabel asked.

Dipper brought his arm closer to his body, avoiding making eye contact with her now.

He was quiet for far too long, and when Mabel tilted her head to get a better look, his eyes seemed unfocused.

“Dipper?”

“Kiddo? Where’s your head going?” Stan asked, reaching out and encouraging Dipper to look up at him. “Stay with us, okay? Whatever’s going around in that noggin ain’t helpin’.”

Dipper nodded vaguely, and he straightened his back up a bit.

“I didn’t want to talk about it,” Dipper admitted, cradling his arm a bit.

As though they were still talking about his failing grades and not his arm.

“Can you talk about what happened with your dad?” Stan asked.

Dipper pressed his lips together.

“Mom and Dad gave me enough time to give the lie I had practiced on the bus ride back to California before tearing into it. Dad … did a lot of yelling. About how much the first few semesters had cost. How the refund wasn’t a refund of all the money they had spent for the semester I was supposed to be doing. How they could’ve spent the money on something else if I was going to be … .”

Dipper swallowed hard, and his body was starting to tremble.

Ford didn’t know their parents. They were still strangers to him. While Stan had been there for their birth, they honestly were fairly strangers to him too. Shermie Pines had been Ford and Stan’s distant older brother, a good ten years older than them and had died suddenly along with his wife. The last time Ford had seen Shermie’s son was when he was still a baby in their mother’s arms.

Stan had gone to a few of the man’s important events throughout his life, but he couldn’t begin to tell you what any glaring faults of the man were.

But as Dipper shook and told them what happened, the more it seemed that Shermie’s son might’ve been a bit too influenced by Filbrick Pines than anyone would’ve liked.

“Oh, Dipper,” Mabel said, frowning.

“Did - did he kick you out?” Stan asked, his grip on his glass tightening.

Dipper shook his head.

“I - I didn’t stick around long enough to find out….”

Ford’s imagination was starting to run away from him at this point. He knew Dipper was flinching at his arms being touched. He had seen the blood on the clothes in the hamper that morning.

“Did he hurt you?” Ford asked, his voice soft and cracking slightly.

Mabel’s brain connected the dots that Ford’s had, and her eyes widened and she turned her head toward Ford.

“No! No way, Dad would never - !” Then she looked to Dipper. “Would he - ?!”

Dipper managed a smile for her, and he laughed a little.

“No. Dad didn’t hurt me. Just yelled a lot.”

“Well, I wouldn’t say he didn’t hurt you. Just did a different kind of number on ya,” Stan said, mouth frowning and eyes serious.

Dipper just shrugged, and Stan’s grip tightened on the glass further. He was gonna get that man for pushing Dipper so far, when the kid already had been struggling with the edge.

Ford wasn’t sure if he believed Dipper. It made sense to want to protect your parent. But he also felt like Stan would push if he knew Dipper was lying, and Stan would know a lot about how people would cover their lies up. You couldn’t con a con man.

It was then that Ford realized that Stan had probably already known Dipper had dropped out, but hadn’t told him.

“What about Mom?” Mabel asked.

Dipper laughed a little more.

“If eyes could kill….. She mostly just ignored me,” Dipper said. “Pretended I wasn’t there.”

“… Sounds like Mom… .”

They had both noticed that the less cute and small they were, the less their mother paid attention to either of them. If there wasn’t something to be immediately proud of, she ignored them as they got older and older.

But Mabel didn’t understand. How had Dipper gotten physically hurt?

Dipper’s laughter bubbled up again, and Mabel didn’t really understand it.

“And because I’m pathetic and can’t handle my dad telling me I’m worthless, I ran away and scared you guys, and I’m sorry for that, and I’m sorry for - for being so fucking stupid - !”

He wasn’t crying, and he wasn’t sobbing, but his laughter wasn’t because he was happy.

“You’re not stupid, Dipper,” Mabel said.

“Mabel’s right! You’re very bright, Dipper, you always have been,” Ford said, jumping on an opportunity to know what to say and comfort Dipper.

But Dipper laughed louder, and it sounded cruel to their ears.

“Of course I am, why else would I - ?” But Dipper cut himself off and took a deep breath and he wasn’t laughing anymore.

He stood up, straightened his suit jacket, then smoothed out the fabric. Adjusting the fez on his head, he flashed his family a smile as though the conversation had never happened.

“Welp, gotta get back to work! If you need anything, you know where I’ll be!”

And he disappeared back into the store, his greeting to Soos floating in just before he closed the door behind him.

Mabel picked up her and Dipper’s plates, then took them over to the sink.

Quietly, Ford muttered, “I’m going to kill their parents.”

“Easy,” Stan said, eyeing him.

“How dare they - !”

“There’s nothing we can do about it now. All we can do is be there for Dipper - and Mabel - when their parents won’t be. Dipper needs us here with him. He doesn’t need either of us going on a revenge trip.”

“If that man really did hurt Dipper - !”

Stan sighed heavily.

“Honestly, I wish it had been that asshole….” Stan said.

“W-what do you mean?”

Stan stared off in the direction that Dipper had disappeared to.

“It’s not my place to say, but Dipper isn’t safe when he’s alone the way things actually are. So I’d … rather it was a threat we could physically protect him from.”

Ford just stared at him.

“What are you talking about?”

But Mabel returned, and Stan refused to answer him after that.

Ford sat at the table, fear gripping his heart, as he came up with his own answers.


	10. Chapter 10

Mabel didn’t like what was happening.

She didn’t like that she only saw Dipper during meals. She didn’t like that he worked from dawn to dusk for the Mystery Shack, then avoided her during the evening. If Stan or Soos or Melody or Abuelita weren’t there, Dipper found a way to slip away from her.

He spent an inordinate amount of time in the bathroom after she used it for the night, and she kept falling asleep before he came back to the attic to sleep.

Spring Break was slipping away from them, and she didn’t know what Dipper was trying to hide from her.

She didn’t like that he was trying to hide his pain from her.

What had happened to the days where they had each other’s backs and told each other everything?

She remembered Dipper holding her hand and assuring her that she’d be okay, that Bill was defeated and gone, and that he’d destroy every CD that had that song on it if it meant she would feel safe again.

She remembered Dipper punching a guy in the teeth for making fun of her freaking out in high school when the song from the Endless Summer Bubble started playing at prom.

She remembered Dipper being really put together, not having any more trouble than usual after Weirdmageddon and throughout high school. Panic attacks were as they had been before that fateful summer, and he had no increase or decrease in nightmares.

While she had thought she was fine and realized she hadn’t been but had worked through it and no longer completely lost her sense of reality when hearing what used to be her favorite pop songs, Dipper had remained constant, resolute, immovable. Strong.

And now he was hiding things from her, and his body shook when his thoughts ran away with him, his hands flexing as though he was trying not to do something with them.

His smiles were insincere and he kept putting on a performance for her, hiding himself away, and it hurt to watch.

She was starting to get angry.

She wasn’t going to let Spring Break end without finding out what was wrong.

In the middle of Spring Break, in the evening, Mabel got up off her bed in the attic, then went to the bathroom door where she knew Dipper had taken refuge behind, and banged on the door.

“Dipper!”

“Yeah?” came Dipper’s voice.

“You’ve been in there for hours!”

“Do you need it?”

“Just open the door!”

“I’m using it right now. If you don’t have to pee, go away.”

“No!”

“Dudes?” came Soos’s voice from down the hall; Soos, Melody and the baby shared a room at the very end of the hall. Abuelita was on the lower level with the TV room and kitchen, and Ford and Stan popped their heads out of the room that they’d been sharing whenever they came back from their sea adventures. (It had used to just be Ford’s room, but having so many people in the Shack at various points of the year meant there had to be expansion of the building; Soos and Melody had also invested in wheelchair ramps for Stan.)

Mabel ignored him.

“Dipper, you’ve been ignoring me for days! You’ve been hiding and - and pretending, and it’s not healthy! Now open the door and tell me what’s going on!”

Dipper was silent for a while on the other side of the door.

“I told you, I dropped out -”

“I’m not talking about that! I’m talking about why your arms hurt! Why I can’t hold you or hug you without you wincing or making pained noises! I wanna know, Dipper, and I’m not leaving this spot until you tell me! And you can’t hide in there forever, it’s the only toilet!” 

The pause felt like it dragged on forever.

“Please don’t.”

“Dipper - !”

“Not right now, _please_.”

“But - !”

Mabel suddenly felt a hand on her shoulder. She turned her head and saw Stan in his tank top and underwear. He knocked on the door.

“Hey, Dipper. I was having trouble sleeping and figured I’d stay up a while longer, watch some TV. The Duchess Approves tends to have a second showing late at night. Why don’t you get cleaned up and watch with me? ‘Cause, y’know, can’t let old men with brittle bones and shit memory wander around the house at night by themselves, right?”

It felt like an age and a half, but Dipper eventually said, “Okay. I’ll be out in a minute.”

Stan then led Mabel away from the bathroom door.

“I know you’re just trying to look out for him, but you should go to bed for now,” Stan said softly.

Mabel stood there in the middle of the hallway, watching Grunkle Stan lumber down the hall.

Eventually, she watched Dipper emerge from the bathroom, head bowed and bath robe pulled tightly around him, arms crossed against his chest.

Dipper didn’t even like that movie….

Mabel went to the attic, but she sat atop her bed with her legs and arms crossed, waiting for Dipper.

But he never came up. At some point, she fell asleep, and when she awoke, her arms and legs were tingling unpleasantly.

She awoke with a snort and a groan and eyes fluttering open, and it took her a moment to realize that Dipper was in the room with her.

He had frozen in the middle of changing, eyes wide and staring at her like a deer caught in headlights.

She blinked her eyes until they were properly open, but her brain still had trouble processing what she was looking at.

Dipper was wearing the Mr. Mystery suit pants, but he was shirtless, and he looked like he had just been in the middle of changing bandages.

Mabel heard the sound of water running. Someone was taking a shower.

Dipper’s arms were carved up like a Thanksgiving turkey. Some were open wounds and angry and red, but there were scars underneath them, and Mabel could make out what looked like a pine tree and a shooting star on one arm.

One wrist has a fresh wound on it, and it was distressingly reminiscent of those kinds of scars Mabel had only ever seen in movies where they wanted to show the character had tried to kill themselves.

Fear crawled up Mabel’s spine and scuttled its way right into her heart and head, and she had this image of Dipper holding a razor against his wrist as she banged on the bathroom door. As he pleaded with her to leave him alone.

“D-dipper? What - ?”

Dipper then shook himself out of the stupor he had been, shook himself out of waiting for her reaction.

He grabbed a random shirt from off the bed, then flung himself out of the room, taking the stairs at a break-neck speed and two at a time.

It took Mabel a few moments to get to her feet and chase after him.

Her legs were asleep, though, so it felt so strange to be moving them at all, and keeping up with Dipper proved to be difficult.

“Dipper! DIPPER!”

Mabel almost fell down the stairs, but she caught herself on the railing.

By the time she reached the bottom of the stairs, some of the feeling had returned to her legs, and she used that to her advantage, but she couldn’t find Dipper downstairs.

“Dipper! Dipper!”

She then found the front door was wide open.

Mabel hurried out onto the porch and looked around, trying to figure out where he had gone. But she didn’t see any sign of him.

“DIPPER!”

She looked at the ground and saw shoe prints. She looked to see where they went, and they went right into the forest.

“DIPPER!”

“What’s happening!?” came Ford’s voice, and Mabel turned her head around to look at him.

Mabel opened her mouth to explain, but the words died in her throat.

Ford’s eyes had trailed to just a ways into the room to Mabel’s left. His eyes widened.

“Why is the gun safe open?” he asked.

Mabel felt like her stomach had dropped out of her body. She didn’t want to turn around to look, but she did anyway, and the safe - an item that had been moved around ever since Soos and Melody had rearranged everything in the house and that no one could agree on a good enough spot for - was indeed open.

Ford went over to it and quickly counted the guns that were in it. He paled.

“There’s one missing. Stan! Stan, did you take a gun out of the safe!?”

“What?” Stan shouted from upstairs. Stan appeared at the top of the stairs, then carefully climbed down them. “What’re you saying?”

“There’s a gun missing!” Ford repeated.

“I caught Dipper changing his bandages and he ran off into the woods and - !” Mabel admittedly quickly, hoping Stan knew what she meant by ‘changing his bandages.’

The terror that settled onto Stan’s face after she said it was proof enough that Stan knew what was going on.

“SOOS! CALL BLUBS AND DURLAND! We have to find Dipper!”

Mabel could tell that Ford was very confused by what was happening, but there wasn’t any time to explain.

Mabel took off into the woods, hoping she’d be able to find him before something bad happened.


	11. Chapter 11

Dipper didn’t start avoiding Ford until after Ford tried to talk to him.

The very first thing Ford had done after dinner that day was drag him into the other room, just the two of them, and sat him down at the kitchen table while the others talked and watched TV in the other room.

“I’ve been doing some research into the matter, Dipper, and quite frankly I think you made the right decision in dropping out of West Coast Tech. I cross-checked their graduation rate with their rate of graduates actually going into their intended fields, and it’s abysmal. You actually will do better at a different institution, and if we hurry, it won’t be too difficult to get you right back on track. And don’t worry about your parents or funding, we’ll figure something out. I bet Fiddleford would even be willing to lend a helping hand.”

Dipper had stared at him. The young man had been so taken aback by the conversation that he couldn’t put on the fake expression he had been giving the customers.

“What?” Dipper said.

Ford had just barreled on through with what he wanted to talk about.

“Here, these are all the colleges you should think about applying for. You are still wanting to go into cryptozoology, correct?”

Dipper stared at the stack of paper Ford had plopped in front of him.

“I actually think your best bet is Backsupmore. While I didn’t appreciate it at the time, it was a decent college, and from my research and what Candy says about it, it’s improved a lot since the days I was in college. And you’d have a friend already if you did, but there are lots of different options, even out of state. While I know your areas of study are vastly different, Pacifica’s college is much more diverse than Mabel’s Art Institute and could benefit you well. Again, don’t worry about money, I’ll handle that.”

“… What?”

Ford actually looked at Dipper and took in his expression and body movement.

Dipper’s body was trembling.

Was the boy cold? Was that why he was still wearing long sleeves when he usual wore T-shirts this time of year? He supposed it would make sense if his body responded to temperature differently as he got older.

He looked confused, but Ford couldn’t imagine for the life of him why he would be.

“Your new college options. You won’t be able to get a really worthwhile job without a college degree, Dipper. And I know you’re really smart and will be able to handle a top-notch career one day. Making discoveries of your own or inventing things or whatever it is you want to do. It’s just a matter of getting back out there and seizing the day.”

Ford smiled encouragingly at him. But Dipper just stared at him. His mouth didn’t curve upward, and his eyes remained … nervous.

Ford’s smile faltered.

Something wasn’t adding up, but what was it? What was Ford missing in this equation?

“W-what if … what if I want to just run the Shack with Soos?” Dipper asked, his voice barely audible to Ford’s ears. Ford’s hearing wasn’t what it used to be, but if he had been Stanley, Ford doubted the other man would’ve been able to hear it at all.

“Why would you want to do that? I mean, the Shack is great and all, it’s perfect for a man like Soos, but it’s not a secret that Soos wasn’t exactly going too many places if you took the Mystery Shack option out. I like the man and appreciate everything he’s done for this family, but he’s never exactly been bright. Not like you, Dipper. You’re meant for so much greater things. You’re just a little discouraged is all, and this is a good way for you to get back onto your feet and keep busy, but you don’t really expect that you’ll be doing this forever. Besides, the Shack won’t be able to sustain two Mr. Mysteries at the same time all year round.”

“And Soos needs it for Melody and his mom and the baby,” Dipper finished for Ford, his tone of voice strangely defeated. Ford didn’t understand.

“Exactly,” Ford said, feeling like this conversation might finally be going in the direction he had intended.

But as Ford started to talk more about the colleges he had researched for Dipper, Dipper abruptly stood up and hurried off. Ford tried to follow him, but Dipper headed straight for the bathroom and locked the door behind him.

Hours later, Mabel had yelled at Dipper through the door.

“Dipper!”

“Yeah?”

“You’ve been in there for hours!”

“Do you need it?”

“Just open the door!”

Ford and Stan both poked their heads out of their bedroom door, wondering what was going on.

Ford felt so in the dark. He remembered feeling like he understood Dipper better than anyone. He remembered feeling like he and Dipper could tell each other anything.

“Dipper, you’ve been ignoring me for days! You’ve been hiding and - and pretending, and it’s not healthy! Now open the door and tell me what’s going on!”

“I told you, I dropped out -”

“I’m not talking about that! I’m talking about why your arms hurt! Why I can’t hold you or hug you without you wincing or making pained noises! I wanna know, Dipper, and I’m not leaving this spot until you tell me! And you can’t hide in there forever, it’s the only toilet!” 

Now it felt like Dipper was someone different, someone he couldn’t relate to, and Ford didn’t know how to bridge the gap.

He had always been bad at bridging the gap. The only success he really had with it was with Stanley now that they had made up. And with Fiddleford.

He didn’t understand why he was being pushed out. He didn’t understand why Dipper was pushing out Mabel, either.

This wasn’t like Dipper.

“Please don’t.”

“Dipper - !”

“Not right now, _please_.”

“But - !”

Ford watched silently as Stan left his side and went into the hall. He watched as Stan put a hand on Mabel’s shoulder and knocked on the bathroom door.

“Hey, Dipper. I was having trouble sleeping and figured I’d stay up a while longer, watch some TV. The Duchess Approves tends to have a second showing late at night. Why don’t you get cleaned up and watch with me? ‘Cause, y’know, can’t let old men with brittle bones and shit memory wander around the house at night by themselves, right?”

It felt like an age and a half, but Dipper eventually said, “Okay. I’ll be out in a minute.”

Stan then led Mabel away from the bathroom door.

It felt like Stan had superpowers.

How did Stan know how to handle this? How did Stan know what to say?

Was it because Stan had never gone to college? Was it because he dropped out of high school? Was it because he had always been the “dumb twin” growing up?

Would Ford know what to do and say if he had ever actually properly failed at any academic program in his life?

Ford had made plenty of mistakes in his life, but he had excelled in class. For all he lacked in lab safety and common sense, he made up for in raw intellect.

Was that his problem?

Ford had trouble sleeping that night, but he eventually did go to sleep, a little after Stan returned from downstairs.

He had been woken up by the sound of Mabel yelling for Dipper.

Vaulting out of bed, old age be damned, Ford threw himself out of the bedroom and hurried down the stairs.

“DIPPER!”

“What’s happening!?” Ford demanded, taking the steps two at a time. Mabel turned her head around to look at him.

Mabel opened her mouth to explain, but Ford’s eyes had trailed to just a ways into the room to Mabel’s left. His eyes widened.

“Why is the gun safe open?” he asked.

It hadn’t been open last night. He had made sure of it. While his safety precautions were horrendous, he and Stan were both paranoid about their weaponry going missing, so they kept it locked up tight. The only ones with the combination were those who might need to use them in times of danger: him, Stan, Melody, and -

His memory was jogged. He had showed Dipper how to access the safe as Dipper’s winter break went on and on. It hadn’t made sense not to show him because what if they were attacked by pterodactyls or something?

Ford went over to it and quickly counted the guns that were in it. He paled.

“There’s one missing. Stan! Stan, did you take a gun out of the safe!?”

“What?” Stan shouted from upstairs. Stan appeared at the top of the stairs, then carefully climbed down them. “What’re you saying?”

“There’s a gun missing!” Ford repeated.

“I caught Dipper changing his bandages and he ran off into the woods and - !” Mabel said, looking even more panicked than she had before.

The look of terror on Stan’s face would haunt Ford’s dreams.

“SOOS! CALL BLUBS AND DURLAND! We have to find Dipper!”

Mabel took off toward the woods, but Ford had noticed she didn’t have any shoes on. Her rush to get to Dipper wasn’t going to last long.

Ford grabbed his boots as he went to Stan.

“Stan, what’s going on!?”

He knew what was happening. He knew what was going on with Dipper. Whether it was a monster or something else, Stan knew.

“Mr. Pines, what do I tell them?!” Soos said, holding the phone in his hand and standing at the top of the stairs.

“Throw me the phone!” Stan shouted.

Soos did so, and Stan quickly put the phone to his ear.

“Blubs! We need immediate help! Dipper, he - Dipper’s a suicide risk, and he just ran off with a gun he swiped from the gun safe he’s not supposed to know the combo to - !”

Ford felt his stomach drop out of him.

“He’s WHAT!?” Ford shouted, his voice cracking.

He had given him the code to the gun safe. He, Stanford Pines, had given Dipper the code to the safe. Just a month ago.

And Stan was telling the cops over the phone that his nephew was a suicide risk.

But that didn’t make any sense! Dipper wasn’t depressed! Dipper - Dipper was just a little discouraged about college - !

Ford’s brain supplied the question he didn’t want to know the answer to. _What had he been doing in the bathroom after you shoved college information in his face? What else have you missed? Were all the signs there and you were just too self-centered to notice?_

Dipper had come back to Gravity Falls with bloody clothes and injuries, and they hadn’t come from his father, and he locked himself in the bathroom when upset and he was a _suicide risk_ -

His head was spinning, but they didn’t have time for him to feel like the world was ending. Dipper needed to be found before he did something they’d all regret.

Mabel came back through the front door, just long enough to grab a random pair of shoes and slipping them on before running back outside. Ford pushed his feet into his boots and didn’t bother with any other clothes.

He ran outside, running after Mabel.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Cliffhanger chapter.

He was a failure. He was disgusting and a waste of space and resources. The look on Mabel’s face had been too much, she was scared, she was scared of him, he had scared her, _what the fuck is wrong with you Dipper Pines, how could you do this to her?_

_You fooled Great-Uncle Ford into thinking you were worth something, into thinking you were worth his time and effort and money - any money, let alone his own or McGucket’s - and now you’ve scared Mabel and you’re nothing but a piece of shit, a worthless meat sack, good-for-nothing shit bag - !_

Dipper kept running. He ran until he couldn’t hear footsteps behind him, and he kept running after that. He didn’t keep track of where he was going. It didn’t matter.

He wasn’t coming back.

He couldn’t.

He didn’t want t-

At some point, he tripped, and he winced as his arms throbbed in pain as he used them to break his fall. His hand clutched the gun. None of his fingers were close to the trigger, and it was a rather awkward way to hold a handgun. But he hadn’t had the nerve to hold it properly, not with Mabel hot on his trail behind him.

If he had an accident involving her, he’d never, ever forgive himself.

She didn’t deserve to be hurt.

She deserved so much better.

Better than him.

She deserved a better brother, a better twin.

Someone who wouldn’t make her have that look on her face.

He pushed himself off the forest floor, pushing through the brush as it caught on his clothes, ripping at the shirt he had randomly pulled over himself, to hide the wounds and scars from anyone who happened to see him run into the forest.

He couldn’t tell if the blood was from scrapes from the branches and thorns or just from the wounds he had caused last night in the bathroom. He also didn’t care.

He couldn’t hear anything else in the forest with him. Not right now. Not anymore. But he couldn’t be sure.

He didn’t want Mabel to see.

Eventually, he slowed down. He stood. He waited.

Silence was all that met his ears. Not even the chirping of a bird.

That was a little weird, but Dipper gave it no thought.

His father’s words and face full of rage floated around in his thoughts, Ford’s encouraging smile while he babbled about college options, Mabel’s angry words and horrified eyes and his name stammering past her lips.

Stan in his wheelchair and offers to watch TV with him, talking to him about all sorts of things and not making him feel unwanted.

He didn’t need Dipper for help, though. He had Ford and Soos. He didn’t need Dipper.

No one needed Dipper, and Dipper didn’t like Dipper.

This was for the best.

Hot tears were rolling down his cheeks in fat drops as Dipper pressed his back against a tree. He held the gun properly and turned the safety off.

He put the barrel of the gun in his mouth.

He took a deep breath. All he could taste was metal and the cool morning air.

Then he saw it.

It was sitting just across from him.

It made sense now why it was so quiet.

Bill Cipher’s stone eye stared right at him, his hand out-stretched, waiting to shake on a deal.

Dipper must’ve been the first living thing to step foot in this clearing in a long while.

He wasn’t sure how long he had stared at Bill. But he had lowered the gun at some point.

He thought back to Weirdmageddon. He thought back to Bill possessing his body and to Ford sharing with him his history with Bill. He thought back to the henchmaniacs and turning the Shack into a mecha robot and making the Cipher wheel and Grunkle Stan losing his memories to save the world.

He remembered all of it, and how … how terrified he had been and how full of adrenaline his body and brain had been and … and how important he had felt to be one of the only forces to stand between Bill and global destruction.

Dipper’s hand trembled, his finger still on the trigger.

Had his decline started then? Had it started at the very end of that summer?

When had he started becoming useless?

Or had he been useless all along? It hadn’t been the Wheel that had stopped Bill. If it hadn’t been for Ford and Stan, he and Mabel would’ve died by Bill’s hand….

The tears started all over again.

“You should’ve fucking done it, you dumb triangle! You should’ve _fucking_ killed me when you had the chance! All powerful, all knowing monster from another dimension, and you couldn’t kill a stupid, useless twelve-year-old kid! Couldn’t do a fucking simple stupid thing like that! Was I just not a priority? The idea of making Great-Uncle Ford beg for my life not entertaining enough for you!? _Was I just insignificant enough that it didn’t matter to you at all!?_ ”

Dipper hadn’t felt rage like this in a long time. He was bursting, exploding, his head pounding from the blood pulsing through his body.

“Well fuck you! Fuck you and everything you’ve ever done to me, my family, the world, and the whole damn universe in every goddamn dimension! You failed, you’re a big fucking failure! You’re exactly where you fucking belong because you failed!”

_Failure like me, you’re dead because you’re a failure like me, I deserve to - this is what failures deserve._

Dipper took aim at his target.

And he fired.


	13. Chapter 13

Sometimes, the police took a long time to arrive. But when you were as well known as the Pines family and valued by the community, they showed up real fast. Sirens blaring, Blubs and Durland pulled up to the Mystery Shack.

Stan stood in the yard, not having bothered with getting dressed. Soos stood nearby with Stan’s wheelchair, and Melody was holding the baby, frowning.

“Do you know which way he ran off?” Blubs asked as he stepped out of the car.

“Mabel and Ford ran off after him. They went that way,” Stan said, pointing into the woods.

There was some rustle of branches, and out came Mabel, covered in shrubbery and face red with exertion.

“I lost track of him - !” Mabel said, her voice watery with sobs she wasn’t yet willing to let loose. “He got such a big head start, and I can’t tell where he went - !”

She went to Stan, and Stan pulled her into a hug.

“Ford’s in there, he’s good at tracking,” Stan said, trying to stay positive for her.

Blubs and Durland weren’t the only ones in the vehicle. Manly Dan stepped out of the car, axe in hand.

“Mabel, are you able to tell us what direction we should be starting with?” Blubs asked.

“I - I saw him go into the woods at that spot, and I thought I heard him go kinda westward, but….” Mabel said, and Blubs gently patted her shoulder.

“We’ll do everything we can to help your brother,” he said, then he turned to Durland and Manly Dan. “All right, let’s go!”

The two police officers and Dan hadn’t even disappeared from view when they heard the gun go off.

It felt like time had come to a stop. Neither Stan nor Mabel dared to breathe.

The only sound was the baby crying in Melody’s arms.

Then it seemed to speed back up as Mabel tore herself out of Stan’s arms and hurried after Blubs, Durland, and Dan.

“That doesn’t mean anything! There’s plenty of monsters and things in the forest! Or it could’ve been Grunkle Ford! We have to find Dipper! I’m coming with!”

“I really think you should stay here with your uncle, sweetheart,” Durland said, doing his very best to be understanding but firm in his assertion.

“But - but Dipper needs me! He’s not dead, he’s not, he’s not he’s not he’s not!”

Blubs and Durland held Mabel back, and the more she fought them, the more she became overcome with tears until she was sitting on the dirt ground, hugging her arms to her chest and crying.

Abuelita went over to Mabel and put her hands on her shoulders, and the two cops and Manly Dan went off into the woods, following what evidence there was for where Dipper had gone.

Soos moved quickly the moment he noticed that Stan was starting to fall. He pushed the wheelchair so that it would catch Stan, then placed his hand on Stan’s arm and helped guide him into the chair.

Stan gripped onto the arms of the wheelchair, and Soos had honestly never heard the man on the brink of tears before.

Stan tried to keep it together, but he couldn’t stop the small whine that erupted in his throat.

“Goddammit, kid….” Stan said under his breath.

“I - I’m sure they’ll find him, Mr. Pines,” Soos said, not knowing what else to do.

“Of all the things I could’ve remembered, why couldn’t I have remembered how to make the thoughts stop?”

“Mr. Pines?”

Soos wasn’t sure if Stan was actually talking to him or not.

Soos wasn’t sure he understood what Stan was saying or if he liked it.

“I remember Ma burning herself, I remember once upon a time wanting to throw myself off a goddamn bridge, but I can’t fucking remember how I stopped wanting to kill myself, and that’s what he _needed_ ….”

This was all too much for Soos to handle at once.

“Mr. Pines, Dipper’s - Dipper’s gonna make it. I know he is,” Soos said, trying to sound confident and self-assured. “There’s no way he - no way he really did the thing. Dipper’s a tough dude, and he never gives up, and - and he loves all of us more than anything, and - and -”

Soos remembered how Dipper’s arm had looked when they had picked him up, how the blood on his clothes had scared him, how his stomach hadn’t felt right when he started imagining what had happened to him.

Soos still didn’t really know what was going on or what had done that to Dipper.

Soos wasn’t capable of imagining that Dipper would do that to himself.

He didn’t like thinking that Dipper wanted to die, and he refused to accept the idea that there might’ve been a moment where had things gone differently, he might never have been able to meet Stan.

No. This wasn’t happening. Dipper was alive, Stan was all right, and this family was going to be okay, and Soos wouldn’t rest until he made sure it was.

“I think we should get both of you back inside the house,” Abuelita said, helping Mabel get back to her feet. “I will make some tea.”

“No! I’m not leaving!” Mabel said.

“At least move to the front porch, yes? There’s ants on the ground. Dipper wouldn’t want you to get ant bites.”

Mabel sniffed, but allowed Abuelita to take her to the porch.

Soos wheeled Stan to the porch and parked him next to Mabel, then sat on the couch on Mabel’s other side.

Abuelita went inside to make the tea. Melody tried to soothe the baby’s crying, but was unsuccessful.

They waited on the porch for someone to emerge from the forest. Stan at some point asked Soos for his cigarettes, and Mabel didn’t have it in her to scold him for not quitting yet.

They waited. And they waited.

Until Ford emerged. With Dipper in his arms.


	14. Chapter 14

Ford had been a little too focused on tracking Dipper’s footprints to notice that Mabel had gotten turned around and ended up having to go back.

He could hear the sirens behind him, but he didn’t stop or turn back. There was no time. As much as he liked Blubs and Durland, he couldn’t wait for them.

Dipper’s life was at stake.

And this felt like it was all Ford’s fault.

If he had just paid better attention to him - !

Ford kept going deeper into the forest, unable to run due to how dense it was becoming, but going as fast as he could.

Then he heard the gun shot, and he froze.

It was as though his own heart had stopped, and he just stood there for a minute. His brain screeched to a halt, and he stared at the footprint that was in front of him in the mud.

He refused to let his thoughts and imagination get the better of him, so before he could actually conjure up any images of what Dipper’s dead body would look like on the forest floor, he pushed forward.

He couldn’t allow himself to think about it.

He wasn’t sure if he’d be able to move if he did.

If Dipper was alive, there was no time to waste. If he had shot himself but failed to die, he was in dire need of help, and Ford would be useless if he just stood around doing nothing but staring at the ground.

It took some time, but he finally reached the point where the footsteps ended.

Ford hesitated just a moment, but he lifted his head up to see the scene before him.

The Bill Cipher statue was just a few feet away, and it had a new bullet hole right in the eye. The gun lay on the ground at Ford’s feet.

Dipper had pushed himself away from it and was now sitting atop a giant rock.

His jeans were pushed down past his knees, a big tangled up with how Dipper was sitting.

Dipper held a particularly jagged and unfortunately very dirty rock in his hand, and he was biting down on his lower lip hard as he successfully dug it into the skin of his left thigh.

Ford winced, then cringed an extra amount when he saw what it was that Dipper was carving into his thigh.

“D-Dipper?” Ford said, silently cursing the fact that he stuttered.

“Don’t look at me!” Dipper demanded, his voice warped by sobs.

Ford did as he asked, not sure what else to do. His eyes went to the statue instead.

It looked like the bullet had gone right through it, leaving a rather clean looking hole right in the middle of Bill’s eye.

“Dipper, I … I’m sorry.”

He couldn’t tell if Dipper had stopped hurting himself with the rock, but he felt like he had Dipper’s attention.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t see how much you were hurting. I’m sorry all I thought to think about was your schooling. I should have asked what you wanted. I … I should’ve made sure you understood that I - and Stan and Mabel - love you no matter what.”

Dipper sniffed, and he heard Dipper move a bit. Ford shifted his head just slightly. In the corner of his eye, he could see that Dipper had pulled his knees up to hug them to his chest.

“It doesn’t matter,” Dipper said slowly.

Ford was glad Mabel wasn’t here. It hurt to hear Dipper say that it didn’t matter if they loved him. No one loved him more than Mabel did.

“I can’t die either way…. Bill might come back, and how would you defeat him without me?” 

Ford’s eyes widened, and they shifted so that they were staring at the statue again.

“I’d never … I’d never be able to forgive myself if I did something that made Bill unstoppable…. If - if he could come back and hurt you all all because I wasn’t there … wasn’t there because I … .”

Ford felt tears of his own pricking at his eyes, but he didn’t shed them as he took steps towards Dipper. Dipper didn’t yell at him or tell him to stop. Ford continued until he had reached him.

Ford leaned over and gave Dipper a hug.

He heard the soft sound of the jagged rock dropping onto the rock Dipper was sitting on, then he felt Dipper’s arms wrapping around him in return.

Ford’s first thought when he had seen the image of Bill being carved into Dipper’s leg was that this whole suicide attempt was somehow Bill’s fault.

But now Ford understood that Bill technically was the one who saved Dipper’s life today.

If fate or destiny was something real, if everything involving Bill was actually supposed to lead up to this moment, if it meant he could have Dipper beat this … thing he was dealing with, Ford would do it all again and again and again.

He loved this young man and his sister more than anything else in the world.

He was still glad that he had arrived before Dipper could carve Bill’s eye into his thigh. As it was, it was a triangle with a top hat, but no eye, and Ford was going to make sure it stayed that way.

“Let’s get you patched up, okay? And I bet you’re hungry. No one’s had breakfast yet.”

Dipper nodded his head against Ford’s shoulder, and Ford pulled away from him long enough to pick him up. He then proceeded to carry Dipper back towards the Shack.

When he appeared with Dipper at the forest’s edge, he could see Stan and Mabel and Soos sitting on the front porch.

Mabel stared at them for a long moment before launching herself from the couch and running at full speed towards them.

She stopped just short of throwing herself at them.

“Grunkle Ford, he’s - is he - !?”

“Hi, Mabel,” Dipper said softly, turning his head towards her.

Mabel started crying (again, if the redness of her eyes and damp cheeks were any indication), and she reached out to touch his hand. He held it in his, and she squeezed tightly.

“I’m sorry I scared you,” Dipper said.

“You should be, you jerk,” she said, but there was no bite to her voice. Only relief. “I’m so glad you’re alive, Dipper! I don’t know what I’d do if I lost you!”

Ford and Mabel walked back to the front porch, Ford still carrying Dipper and Mabel refusing to let go of his hand.

“Soos, can you help get the kitchen set up for tending to Dipper’s wounds? If we don’t disinfect what’s on his thigh, it’s going to get seriously infected.”

“On it, Dr. Pines!”

Stan wheeled himself into the house behind them. The sound of his twin’s breathing told Ford that Stan was trying really hard not to start crying in relief.

Without even being asked, Melody handled calling Blubs’s cell phone to tell them that Ford had found Dipper and that he was back at the Shack now and was alive. That meant the Pines family only had to concern themselves with taking care of Dipper.

Dipper shrugged his shirt off, since the open wounds on his arms had gotten dirty at this point as well, and he was propped up on a few chairs, the leg with the Bill-shaped wound propped up.

Mabel filled up a bowl with water, then placed it and some towels on the table. The water was lukewarm, and Ford dampened one of the towels before taking it to Dipper’s thigh to clean it.

The jagged rock had been rather filthy, so there was dirt and moss stuck in the cuts that made up Bill’s image. It was gross just thinking about it, let alone actually seeing it and having to make sure he got rid of every nasty bit.

Stan got out of the wheelchair so he could better reach Dipper’s arms and did as Ford did, cleaning the wounds with a warm, wet towel first.

Mabel pulled out the disinfectant and the cotton swabs and ointment and bandages.

Dipper managed to reach the disinfectant before Ford could grab it and dumped too much over his thigh, then hissed at the pain.

Ford pretended like he didn’t feel anything about it.

“Dipper!” Mabel scolded lightly, but any bite to her comment died at the complete blank expression in Dipper’s eyes. His mouth might’ve been curled up in pain, but Dipper still wasn’t quite there in the eyes.

Stan took the disinfectant from him, then applied it to the cotton swabs he was using and took care of Dipper’s arm wounds.

Then both men applied the ointment and helped with the bandage wrapping.

By the time they were done, all four of them were exhausted. And all of them ignored the rumbling of four stomachs.

They could hear the voices of Blubs, Durland, and Manly Dan just in the other room, but none of them were willing to get up and leave the room.

Melody popped her head into the kitchen.

“Sounds like you guys are hungry. We’ll pick up some food. What would you like?”

Dipper turned his head towards Mabel.

“I’ll have whatever Mabel gets,” he said, giving her a little smile.

Mabel wrapped her arms around Dipper’s shoulders - the only parts of his arms that weren’t cut up at this point - and squeezed him tightly.

“I want doughnuts with lots of sugar and icing and chocolate and filling,” Mabel said.

“And coffee,” both Ford and Stan said in unison.

“Doughnuts and coffee it is. We’ll be right back with that. You guys just relax, okay?” Melody said.

“Okay,” Dipper and Mabel said, both sounding exhausted.

“Thank you,” Ford said. He was going to be eternally grateful for the whole Ramirez family.

“We owe you,” Stan said.

“Oh, don’t worry about owing us anything. You’re family,” Melody said, and then she disappeared from the doorway.

Dipper moved his arm up so he could awkwardly hug Mabel back without actually moving or adjusting how he was sitting. He ended up awkwardly grasping her shoulder, mostly, but it made Mabel squeeze him tighter, and Dipper smiled with exhaustion.

Stan hadn’t been able to stay awake as they waited, and Ford was this close to nodding off as well.

As long as Dipper was alive and with them, falling asleep might not be so bad, even if it was still morning.


	15. Chapter 15

Stan ended up jolting away at some point, having fallen asleep in his wheelchair, and he opened his eyes to the sight of Dipper and Mabel eating the doughnuts Melody had brought. Ford was just within sight beyond the kitchen doorway, talking with Blubs and Durland in low voices.

The two policemen left, then Ford re-entered the kitchen, headed for the cabinet, pulled out the bottle of rum Stan had bought last month, then poured way too much of it into his coffee mug before adding the coffee to it.

Stan was finding himself itching for a cigarette, but he fought the urge and reached for a doughnut instead.

Ford sat down and drank his coffee, reaching for a doughnut, and the four of them were allowed to just be by themselves together for a while.

The day passed with just the four of them resting after their very stressful morning and spending time together.

But the calm that followed on that day didn’t last. While Dipper felt better the next day, it was clear that they still had a problem.

Soos insisted Dipper take the rest of the week off from Mr. Mystery duty, despite the young man trying to go back to work.

Stan had chosen to just not watch Dipper take his exacto-blade razor and gently nick at his own fingers and pretend he didn’t notice by burying his face into the newspaper.

When Mabel came into the kitchen, she had a very different reaction, and Stan, for a moment, contemplated just pretending he had gone completely deaf and just keep reading the paper.

But that would’ve been horribly irresponsible, so he put the paper away.

Mabel was already getting the first aid kit out and talking a mile a minute, scolding Dipper for hurting himself.

Irritation at having been interrupted in his addiction fix was clear on Dipper’s face, but he kept quiet as Mabel grabbed his hand.

“It’s gonna get infected, and you’re already covered in hurty spots, and you’re gonna look like a mummy when all’s said and done and - !”

“Could be an interesting attraction,” Dipper joked, and Mabel glared at him.

Stan tried but failed not to laugh, and Mabel trained her glare onto him instead.

“And you were just sitting there!”

“What? Just ‘cause I don’t want him doin’ it doesn’t mean I’m gonna go be a hypocrite when I haven’t quit smoking,” Stan said. “Doesn’t make sense to ask him to do something I haven’t done. And it's better he do it where we can keep an eye on him than do it alone.”

Dipper smiled at his uncle, and Stan gave him a little smile back.

“But it hurts him! And you said you had quit! Pants on fire liar!”

“Yeah, yeah.”

That had been the wrong thing to say. A fire was burning in her eyes, and she stood up abruptly.

“Grunkle Stan, you’re gonna quit smoking and like it! And if he quits smoking, you have to quit cutting yourself!”

She rounded on Dipper, and Dipper just looked up at her, the irritation starting to die.

Both of them sighed at the same time.

“Fine,” Dipper said.

“But only if Ford quits drinking. Asshole drinks so much of it I haven’t had a real drink in months.”

“GRUNKLE FORD!”

Ford came running at the sound of Mabel yelling, thinking it was an emergency.

“What happened!?”

Stan watched as Ford noticed Dipper had new bandages on his hands, but any questions about it were cut off by Mabel.

“Dipper agreed that if Grunkle Stan quits smoking, he’ll quit cutting, and if you quit drinking, Grunkle Stan will quit smoking! So guess what you’re gonna do!”

“What!?”

Stan and Dipper laughed over Ford’s panicked expression.

“It’s for your own good, Great-Uncle Ford,” Dipper said, a shit-eating smirk on his face.

“But - but - !” Ford tried to protest, but Mabel wasn’t having it.

“No buts! I want all three of you to live to see me getting married and being a famous fashion designer and having kids who come over to visit their Uncle Dipper and their Great-Grunkles, and that’s not gonna happen if you drink, smoke, and bleed yourselves to death!”

The guilt that the statement brought up was definitely there in all three of them, but it wasn’t enough to keep Ford from saying what he said next.

“So what’re you giving up?”

“Huh?”

“I’m not giving up drinking unless you give up something too.”

“But I’m not addicted to anything,” Mabel said, eyebrows furrowed.

“Do you still eat sugar packets?” Dipper asked, his smirk getting wider.

“Yeah, but what’s that got to do with - ?”

“And do you still make Mabel Juice?” Stan asked, catching on to what Dipper was getting at.

“Yeah, at least four glasses a day. What about it?”

Ford, Stan, and Dipper had identical smirks.

“Oh no. No! You can’t be addicted to sugar!”

“Actually, you can,” Ford said. “And caffeine. And Mabel Juice has the highest concentration of caffeine I’ve ever consumed.”

Dipper nodded in agreement.

“Ford quits drinking if you quit sugar and caffeine, then Stan quits smoking, and I quit cutting. Everybody wins.” Dipper said.

“And loses,” Stan added, watching with amusement as Mabel slumped into the chair next to Dipper.

“Okay,” Mabel said, agreeing to their terms.

Dipper took his razor back from Mabel, but he put it into the case he had for it and slipped it into his pocket.

“… Are we starting right now?” Ford asked, halfway to bringing his mug to his mouth.

“Ideally,” Mabel said.

But then her stomach growled and she made a face.

“B-but maybe we can start tomorrow morning. Y-yeah, fresh start and all that.”

She then grabbed a soda from the fridge, and Stan picked himself up to take a smoking break while he still could


	16. Chapter 16

The end of Spring Break felt like it came too fast for Mabel. She stood at the bus stop, not looking in the direction of the bus but at Dipper.

“And you’ll call me every day?”

“I’ll do my best. If not, then every other day.”

“Promise you’ll call everyday.”

“I’ll contact you every day, how about that?”

“But Dipper -”

“C’mon, Mabel. You know what it’s like to be tired, right?” Stan said. “I’ll make sure he contacts you no matter what, though. Even if it’s one of those little texts.”

“Okay….”

Dipper smiled at her.

“I’ll be okay.”

She still looked worried.

“If you need me, I’ll drop everything and come on over. Don’t hesitate to ask me to.”

“All right, Mabel. Now you don’t forget to tell us when you’ve gotten back to your school safe and sound,” Dipper said.

Mabel nodded.

They could hear the bus rumbling up the road. Mabel took the moment to give Dipper a hug, slipping her arms underneath his.

Dipper prepared himself for the gentle throbs of pain as he wrapped his arms around her and squeezed her lightly.

“Don’t forget to have fun, okay?” Dipper said. “You party animal.”

Mabel managed to smile at that.

“I love you, Dipper.”

“Love you too, Mabel.”

She gave him one last hug, then the bus pulled up. She then hugged Ford and Stan, then climbed on aboard.

“Bye Mabel!”

“See you for Fall Break!”

“Knock ‘em dead during your internship, sweetie!”

“And kick those finals’ asses!”

“Ha ha, I will, Grunkle Ford! Bye!”

They watched as the bus pulled away.

Stan watched Dipper after a while, watched as Dipper’s gaze never faltered from where the bus had disappeared.

“Ready to go back, kiddo?”

“Yeah. In a minute.”

“She’ll be back before you know it,” Stan said, reaching out to put a hand on his shoulder.

“Yeah. I know.”

They walked back to the Shack (or rather, Ford and Dipper walked while Stan wheeled himself along as much as he could stand, then grumpily asked if Dipper could help wheel him the rest of the way).

Dipper didn’t make any comments about the request, and both Ford and Dipper could tell that Stan was embarrassed he had to ask at all.

“The tree root was just causing some problems,” Stan said.

It wasn’t a secret that both Ford and Stan’s energy levels had been declining at a slow but steady pace. And it wasn’t a secret that Stan was less healthy than Ford.

There hadn’t been any talks of Ford and Stan going back onto the water, and Dipper had refrained from asking why.

He couldn’t imagine how bad the initial fall on the boat had been. Or maybe the fall itself hadn’t been as bad as Dipper was imagining, but that Ford had been too shaken by the accident and the resulting damage and diagnosis it had brought about.

Or maybe they just didn’t want to leave Dipper by himself in Gravity Falls.

Or if they had wanted him to go with him, maybe they just didn’t want to risk Dipper’s depression getting worse out in the Arctic.

“Whoa! Easy, Dipper.”

Dipper was snapped out of his train of thought by Stan’s voice, and he flushed as he realized he hadn’t been looking where they were going.

“Sorry!”

“Hey, it’s okay. I’m still in it,” Stan said, laughing a little. “You doing okay, Space Cadet?”

“Yeah, I just … was thinking.”

“About what?” Ford asked.

Dipper bit his lower lip.

“… About why you two haven’t been talking about going back onto the ocean at all. I mean, it’s probably just because of … the accident but….”

Ford raised an eyebrow, and Stan was doing his best to turn his head to look at Dipper.

“I guess I was just wondering if there was anything else holding you back….” Dipper said.

“Well, on my end, it’s just that I’m not one hundred percent sure what it would take to make the ship wheelchair safe, or how expensive that might be. And I haven’t been bothered enough to look it up yet,” Stan said. “I don’t really know how to use that fancy computer, after all.”

Dipper laughed a little.

“I could help with that, Grunkle Stan.”

“I know,” Stan said, and Dipper could hear the smile on his face.

“As for my end,” Ford said, his voice sounding … off. “I have been thinking that perhaps it’s best if I try to get better details for the local anomalies here in Gravity Falls. There’s only so much I remember from my notes from before Bill destroyed the journals, and I’m sure I still had had some inaccuracies, and I’d like to perfect that work for now. As much as I’d like to go out onto the ocean again, I think that’s the best course of action for my work for now.”

“Sounds legit,” Dipper said, but he knew that it was more of an excuse not to leave, not an actual reason.

He did his best to comfort himself with the thought that at the very least, he wasn’t holding Stan back.

The reason Great-Uncle Ford was staying was probably Stan. He didn’t want to put Stan in an unsafe position. And he probably didn’t want to go to the Arctic alone. And it would be too much to expect Soos and Melody to handle taking care of Abuelita and the baby and Stan. Even if Dipper would be there too.

In many ways, they’d be taking care of Dipper too, if Ford left.

He repeated the thoughts on purpose in his head, that he was not being a burden on Ford and Stan. That this was their decision to stay, that it had nothing to do with him.

The thoughts struggled to be strong in the face of self-loathing in the dead of night.


	17. Chapter 17

Ford wasn’t sure how to broach the subject, but the weather was getting warmer, and Soos was going to be hiring summer help now that the high school students had nothing better to do. And Ford really did think Dipper could do … more than just doing tours for the Shack.

Ford fully believed Dipper was destined for greatness, if he only reached for it, though he understood now that reaching for it was … complicated and dangerous for Dipper.

Ford couldn’t fully understand how Dipper felt. Not like Stan could. Ford did know what it felt to feel like you were not nearly as important as the big picture. Ford had no problems with sacrificing himself for the greater good.

He could not imagine thinking himself undeserving of a good opportunity. He could not understand how Dipper couldn’t see how smart and intelligent he was or why insisting on it made Dipper … feel bad.

He was never going to do it again if it was going to make Dipper feel that way, but he didn’t want to stop trying to help Dipper be the best that he could be.

He hoped this was the right thing to do.

Soos had been busy with interviews all day, and that meant that Dipper had taken the helm of looking after the shop and doing the tours. Stan helped out with the cash register, though Soos had gotten a more high-tech register and Stan was having some trouble figuring out how it worked.

So when Dipper and Stan were working on closing the shop, Ford came in and stood awkwardly for a moment.

“What’s up, Ford?” Stan asked, noticing he was there.

“I was wondering if I could talk to Dipper for a moment?” Ford asked.

“Sure, Great-Uncle Ford,” Dipper said.

He finished locking the gift shop entrance, then boxed up the perishable items, then headed into the back with Ford.

“What did you want to talk about?” Dipper asked.

“Well,” Ford started, beginning to have second thoughts. He believed this was good for Dipper. And Dipper didn’t have to say yes. If he really didn’t want to. He just wanted Dipper to be happy. “With Stan’s health the way that it is right now, I’m too nervous to go back out on the sea. And it doesn’t feel right to go sailing without him. But I do want to continue my research, and quite a few notes were destroyed by Bill. There’s a whole forest here full of so many creatures, it doesn’t feel right to not try to put those notes back together. Perhaps make it into something we can sell in the shop, for the safety of the townsfolk.”

Dipper was staring at him, not seeming to comprehend where he was gearing the conversation. It made him nervous.

He didn’t know if Dipper just hadn’t figured it out or was not figuring it out on purpose. That he knew where it was going, didn’t like that idea, and was waiting for Ford to somehow prove him wrong. He hoped the former.

“And I’m not as young as I used to be. I really shouldn’t be stomping through the forest by myself. So I was thinking: would you like to take me up on that apprenticeship offer I made all those years ago? Now that you’re older and, well, will be staying with us?”

Dipper continued to stare at him, eyes wide, and Ford fought the urge to bite his lip.

He silently cursed the fact that he wasn’t allowed to drink unless someone had a relapse.

He didn’t want Dipper to relapse.

“You - you really want me to help with your research?”

“Of course I do,” Ford said. “You’re my friend and, more importantly, my family, and I know a good brain when I see one. We work together well, and I know you know how to explore the woods and discover its secrets. There’s no one who’d be better fit to help me.”

Ford let there be a pause for Dipper to process it all.

“Will you accept my proposal?” Ford asked.

“I … yeah. Yes! I accept! I’ll do it! I’ll help!”

Ford’s face broke out into a grin.

“Excellent! Thank you, Dipper!”

Ford held out his hand, and Dipper shook it, then Ford pulled him into a hug, and Dipper hugged him back. Dipper squeezed Ford tightly, and Ford forgot for a moment that Dipper still had an open wound or two he had to be careful of.

This way, Dipper could stay busy whenever his Mystery Shack shifts were lacking. He could throw himself into a different kind of work. This would be good for Dipper.

Besides, he knew for a fact that Dipper had yet to actually meet a Bigfoot. And Ford was going to make that happen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's a wrap! This fic is what I consider the canon of the College Drop Out Dipper AU. I have written stuff that extends from this point, but some of it is stuff I was mostly exploring for theme's sake and self-expression. And I've given permission to a few others to play with the AU, and if this story helped with any issues in your life, you're welcome to play with the AU too. Whether it's shipping and writing about how issues such as depression and self-harm can affect a relationship or just using the AU to work through issues re: self-harm, suicidal thoughts, and depression or exploring other aspects in the story (like Stan and Dipper bonding or Ma Pines' history of burning herself), this is my permission to use the AU as you see fit. Be sure to tag it as "college drop out dipper" on tumblr if you post it there and/or tag it as a gift or related works here on AO3. Somehow let people know where the original fic is, is basically what I'm asking. On tumblr, my url is reaganwarren.tumblr.com. In the tag on my blog, I have a lot of Dipifica, but Nour386 is working on a Pinescone version that picks up where Mabel leaves after Spring Break. 
> 
> You should also check out this commission peekabooitsmiko did for me on tumblr: http://peekabooitsmiko.tumblr.com/post/143247178752 - it's the only current piece of fan art for the AU, and I love it lots.
> 
> Thank you so much for reading!


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